Anchorage Adds Tokenized Uranium Custody as the Federally Chartered Crypto Bank Expands Real World Asset Coverage

Anchorage Brings Tokenized Uranium Custody to America’s First Federally Chartered Crypto Bank, Expanding Real World Assets Beyond Treasuries

Anchorage Digital Bank has added custody support for Etherlink and seven assets issued on the Tezos-linked layer-2 network, headlined by xU3O8, a token that represents ownership of physical uranium and gives institutions commodity exposure without ever touching the underlying material.

The integration, announced this week, allows Anchorage’s institutional clients to hold Etherlink-issued assets in segregated accounts at the federally chartered crypto bank. Beyond the uranium token, the supported lineup includes wrapped XTZ, the liquid staking token stXTZ, stablecoins USDT, USDC and USDSM, and wrapped Ether, according to the announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

Why Uranium, Why Now

Tokenized uranium sits at the strange but growing intersection of commodity finance and crypto rails. xU3O8 represents ownership of physical uranium held by a specialist vehicle, letting investors gain exposure to a commodity whose price has been reshaped by the nuclear power renaissance without dealing with the intermediaries that have historically dominated the market. Physical uranium trading has traditionally required specialist brokers, lengthy settlement periods and relatively high minimum ticket sizes, which Anchorage says tokenization now compresses to transfers and settlements measured in minutes rather than weeks.

At current price levels the token carries a market capitalization just above 9 million USD according to CoinMarketCap data, a rounding error in the more than 50 billion USD real world asset tokenization sector, but a strategically interesting one. Uranium is a bet on baseload electricity demand from data centers, and with crypto miners converting sites to artificial intelligence workloads, the overlap between digital asset treasuries and energy-exposed commodities keeps widening.

Anchorage Is Not First, but It Is the Most Regulated

Hex Trust integrated Etherlink in August 2025 to offer custody for xU3O8 and other assets on the network, so Anchorage is following an established playbook rather than inventing one. The difference is the charter. Anchorage operates as the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States, meaning the assets sit inside a nationally regulated banking perimeter with OCC examination, segregation requirements and bankruptcy-remote account structures that institutional risk committees treat differently from offshore or state-level custody arrangements.

That distinction matters for the specific asset class. A token representing physical uranium in a special jurisdiction is only as good as its custody chain, and wrapping commodity claims inside a federally chartered bank answers the question most treasurers ask first: who is legally holding this if something breaks.

The Broader Real World Asset Race

The move fits squarely into Anchorage’s recent expansion of institutional services beyond native crypto. The bank has been courting tokenization issuers for months, and competitors are racing to do the same: tokenized Treasury products have grown into tens of billions of dollars in on-chain value, private credit funds are migrating to public chains, and platforms from Securitize to Superstate have lined up regulated partners to hold the wrappers.

Etherlink itself is an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible layer-2 that settles on Tezos, a chain that has quietly built a niche in security tokenization through European bond and fund pilots. By supporting Etherlink assets, Anchorage gives that ecosystem access to United States institutional custody, which has been a missing piece for Tezos-based offerings seeking American buyers.

Market Context

The custody expansion lands while the wider market digests a hawkish turn from the Federal Reserve, which raised rates 25 basis points to the 3.75 to 4 percent range, its first hike since 2023. Bitcoin held near 76,323 USD at the 12:00 UTC snapshot, with Ether at 2,436 USD and Solana at 99.94 USD, and capital continues to rotate into yield-bearing and real world asset narratives that look resilient in a higher-rate environment.

Stablecoin custody deserves attention too. The inclusion of USDT, USDC and USDSM alongside the commodity token means institutions can now keep cash-equivalent balances and exotic real world claims under one regulated roof, simplifying the operational story that has kept many corporate treasuries on the sidelines.

What to Watch

The open question is demand depth. A 9 million USD market cap means the uranium token trades thin, and custody availability alone does not create liquidity. But listings beget listings: if Anchorage clients begin allocating, other custodians will add support, and issuers may expand the commodity wrapper family to assets like physical platinum or agricultural commodities that share the same settlement inefficiencies.

Anchorage has not disclosed fee structures or minimum account sizes for the new assets. Institutional clients can begin requesting segregated accounts for the seven supported Etherlink assets immediately, per the announcement, with the uranium token expected to draw the initial interest from funds seeking uncorrelated exposure to the nuclear fuel cycle.

For the tokenization industry, the takeaway is simple: the frontier has moved past Treasuries, and even uranium now clears through a federally chartered crypto bank in minutes.