Anchorage CEO says tokenized deposits are the most underestimated area in crypto today

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It’s only been a year since the GENIUS Act was passed, and the stablecoin market cap has nearly doubled to north of $300 billion. For Anchorage Digital’s CEO and co-founder Nathan McCauley, and its head of policy Kevin Wysocki, that number represents more of a starting line than a milestone.

“When we get [the Clarity Act] across the finish line, it's gonna lead to more capital in this space and more growth and more projects," Wysocki said on StrataMedia's Talking Tokens podcast.

Armed with a federal charter since 2021, Anchorage has been able to observe crypto’s growing appeal for institutions longer than most of its kind. And its nature as a national trust bank proved a staunch source of credibility with the kinds of institutions now racing to build strategies around stablecoins and tokenization. 

Still, both McCauley and Wysocki feel the sheer pace of change is what best characterizes the past year. "What we're seeing right now is an absolute acceleration," McCauley said. 

"When America sets the standards, a lot of other countries fall in line," Wysocki added. "And that's what we've seen when we've talked to other central banks around the world."

Today, as asset managers launch new crypto ETFs or tokenizing existing funds, large banks and financial institutions are building products around stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and real-world assets. 

"There were more [proof of concepts] than funds tokenized onchain for about half a decade," McCauley said. "You can really experiment as much as you want, but it's not true innovation until it's in production. We're now in a moment that matters."

One of the clearest examples of the ongoing shift is money transfer giant Western Union, which is working with Anchorage to upgrade its remittance infrastructure around a new digital dollar. This means people around the world who receive remittances will be able to hold on to a dollar-backed stablecoin instead of converting it immediately to their local currency - a product that effectively doubles as a US dollar storage. 

It's an old use case being upgraded with new infrastructure, McCauley noted, which is the kind of proof point he thinks will open the floodgates for the next wave of entrants.

McCauley’s framework for who (and what) comes next predicts three waves. Initially, first movers like Tether will continue to lead in market share and provide GENIUS-compliant stablecoins. The second wave would be financial companies like fintechs, remittance platforms and banks, which are building stablecoin rails into their core infrastructure. 

The third wave, still in its early days, would be Fortune 500 companies and major tech platforms that realize their embedded ecosystems are a natural fit for stablecoin-based transactions.

However, one area that McCauley feels is most underestimated by the broader market is tokenized deposits. 

“I think probably the biggest delta right now [...] are the discussions around tokenized deposits,” McCauley said. “The tokenized deposit idea is accelerating very rapidly and is on every bank's mind.”

In theory, this involves banks taking their own deposit base, putting it onchain, and circulating it with the same properties as a digital asset with instant, global access and programmability.

"[Banks] can imagine using the tokenized deposit for internal accounting, internal transparency, even settling with international counterparties instantly," he said. "If I do tokenized deposits, I know I can improve the cost basis of my own operations - that's the first level of it being compelling."

Anchorage is building infrastructure for both sides of this potential market. The firm has so far issued five stablecoins, added settlement, trading and tokenized deposit capabilities to its custody business, and is positioning itself as the infrastructure layer for institutions entering the space. 

Looking forward, McCauley is most excited about agentic banking. While the technology’s near term use cases are modest, with AI agents having spending limits, handling basic transactions, automating recurring payments and so on, he believes eventually more agent-to-agent payments will be settled over stablecoins. 

McCauley's analog for what comes next is Ransom Olds, the creator of the Oldsmobile, who spent years campaigning for cities to build roads because he had a great car and nowhere to take it. 

He argues stablecoins are the car. The roads are the 5,000 U.S. banks, the fintechs, the global payment networks, the settlement systems, and the dispute resolution infrastructure that all need to be built and integrated before the full vision is realized. "That's gonna be decades of work, decades of innovation," he said. "In a real sense, it's always gonna be day one in stablecoin land."

Check out the next section for more details and the full episode.

If you're building with stablecoins, the question isn't just can you issue one, it's who you trust to do it right.

Regulated stablecoin issuance starts with Anchorage Digital.

Home to America's first federally chartered digital asset bank, Anchorage Digital brings a level of regulatory standing most players in this space simply don't have. That means end-to-end stablecoin issuance built on a compliant foundation.

Pair that with correspondent banking that connects stablecoins to the traditional financial system, and tokenization infrastructure that lets institutions bring real-world assets on-chain, securely, and within the rules.

To find out more, visit anchorage.com.

For today’s episode, I interviewed Anchorage Digital’s CEO and Co-founder Nathan McCauley and Head of Policy Kevin Wysocki to talk about what the post-GENIUS Act world of stablecoins looks like from the inside.

They think most of the market isn't paying enough attention to the banks racing to tokenize their deposits and explain why all 5,000+ US banks are eventually going to need stablecoin rails, how DC has done a near complete 180 on crypto, and why agentic banking is tracking almost exactly like the early crypto industry did in 2017.

TIMESTAMPS:

02:00 The Current State of Institutional Adoption

03:55 Understanding Stablecoins and Digital Dollars

06:04 Global Perspective on Dollar Dominance

10:04 Future of Cross-Border Commerce and Global Payments

12:07 Building Infrastructure for Stablecoins

13:59 The Role of Policy in Stablecoin Adoption

20:50 Conversations Behind Closed Doors

23:01 Fed Master Accounts and Regulatory Clarity

27:23 The Rise of Tokenized Deposits

39:10 Building Trust in the Crypto Industry

41:49 The Future of Agentic Banking

49:34 Advice for the Future

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