Anchorage Digital deepens RIA market push by acquiring unit of Securitize
Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered digital asset bank, has acquired Securitize’s investment adviser platform as it seeks to expand its reach among institutional investors amid the growing adoption of digital assets.Anchorage announced on Monday that it has completed the acquisition of Securitize For Advisors (SFA), a lesser-known unit of Securitize, a company best known for its work in tokenizing real-world assets. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.SFA is designed for registered investment advisers (RIAs); before the acquisition, it already relied on Anchorage for custody of client assets. By bringing the adviser platform in-house, Anchorage consolidates custody, trading and adviser-facing tools within a single platform, rather than operating across separate systems. Anchorage is an institutional crypto platform that operates a federally chartered digital asset bank in the United States. In March, it was selected by Cantor Fitzgerald as a custody partner for Bitcoin (BTC).For Securitize, the sale enables the company to focus more on its core tokenization business, according to Carlos Domingo, the company’s CEO. Securitize has been accelerating its real-world asset strategy and is moving forward with plans to go public through a special purpose acquisition company sponsored by Cantor Fitzgerald. In May of last year, it raised $47 million in a funding round led by BlackRock.Securitize is behind BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund, known as BUIDL. Related: Anchorage Digital adds HYPE staking support through Figment partnershipRIAs emerge as a key channel for digital asset adoptionNathan McCauley, co-founder and chief executive of Anchorage Digital, said registered investment advisers are “driving one of the most important waves of crypto adoption,” likely in reference to growing institutional adoption of digital assets via spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to clients.RIA involvement has been building for several years. Momentum began to shift in 2020, when the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency allowed federally chartered banks to custody digital assets, giving advisers a compliant pathway to gain exposure.Broader participation followed the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in early 2024, which lowered operational and regulatory hurdles for advisers and accelerated mainstream access. The funds align with existing RIA infrastructure, including broker-dealers and custodians, making allocation easier for institutional investors. Even after early adoption, RIAs still control access to sizable portions of the market that have yet to enter the digital assets space.“The reason that we’re here today is because of the retail channels adopting crypto ETFs and crypto more broadly,” Federico Brokate, an executive at crypto issuer 21Shares, told Cointelegraph. “The next category is RIAs, and this is where we need to see the majority of ETF flow over the next five years.”Related: SEC staff gives guidance on how securities laws could apply to crypto