Asset tokenization's dollar leg: Securitize and Anchorage

Securitize, a company that builds the systems big asset managers use to issue tokenized funds, will now have its stablecoins created and redeemed by Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A. without a go-between, according to Unchained. This article looks at the part of tokenization most headlines skip: the dollar side of every trade, and what changes when one federally chartered bank issues, holds and settles it.

What happened

The two firms announced the arrangement on Tuesday, Unchained reported. Under it, Anchorage is the issuer of the stablecoins, their custodian and the party that settles each transaction. Anchorage described the setup as an alternative to getting the tokens through intermediaries. Securitize said on X that a single federally chartered bank now handles the full cycle, from minting a token to redeeming it.

The announcement did not say which Anchorage stablecoin Securitize will use. The bank's issuance business includes USDtb, made with Ethena Labs, and USA₮, built with Tether. Securitize is listed on the NYSE as SECZ and runs issuance rails for firms such as BlackRock, Apollo, KKR, VanEck, BNY, plus Hamilton Lane. Anchorage put the assets on Securitize's platform at more than $4 billion.

Asset tokenization explained: every trade has two legs

Asset tokenization means recording ownership of a traditional asset, such as a fund share, as a token on a blockchain. The token can then move between wallets the way a payment does. But a purchase is never just a token moving. Someone hands over a fund share, and someone else hands over money. Market people call these the asset leg and the cash leg.

In traditional markets, the cash leg runs through bank accounts and payment systems, and the asset leg runs through a separate settlement chain. If the share arrives and the money does not, one side carries the risk. Tokenization promises to move both legs on the same ledger at the same moment. That only works if there is a token that stands in for dollars. Today that role is mostly played by stablecoins.

• Minting: a firm sends dollars to the issuer, and the issuer creates the same value in stablecoins.
• Custody: someone must hold the tokens, and the reserves behind them, safely.
• Settlement: the stablecoins move against the fund tokens, closing the trade.
• Redemption: a holder returns stablecoins to the issuer and gets dollars back.

Each of these steps can sit with a different company. When a fund platform buys stablecoins on the market or through a broker, it depends on those middlemen for price, timing and access. In this deal, Anchorage takes all four steps. Carlos Domingo, Securitize's chairman and CEO, argued that the cash side of each tokenized trade must face the same scrutiny as the securities side.

What changes, and for whom

The main change is who stands behind the dollar token. Domingo said the deal gives Securitize digital dollars issued under federal oversight and held by the same institution that issues them. A national bank answers to the OCC, the federal Comptroller of the Currency. So the issuer, the custodian and the settlement agent all fall under one bank supervisor, instead of being spread across firms with different rules.

Nathan McCauley, Anchorage's co-founder and CEO, put the case this way: "Regulated issuance is what lets tokenization reach institutional scale." Timing adds weight. One day after the announcement, the OCC published its final GENIUS Act stablecoin rule. The GENIUS Act is the US law for payment stablecoins.

Scale is the other reason the cash leg matters. Anchorage cited rwa.xyz figures showing the tokenized real-world asset market at about $23 billion at the close of 2025 and at $31 billion by March. As more fund shares move on-chain, more dollars must move with them.

The loop worth noticing

The two firms were already linked before this deal. Citing its attested reserve report, Anchorage said about 99% of USDtb's reserves, roughly $530 million, sat in BlackRock's BUIDL fund as of Aug. 31. BUIDL is itself tokenized by Securitize.

That creates a circle. A tokenized fund can hold the reserves of a stablecoin, and the same stablecoin can be used to buy tokenized funds. Concentration cuts both ways. One bank doing everything removes handoffs between firms, but it also means a problem at that bank touches every step at once. Readers should keep that trade-off in mind when they hear that middlemen have been removed.

Open questions

Unchained's report leaves several points open. It does not say which stablecoin Securitize will mint, so the reserve mix behind the dollar leg is unknown. It does not explain how the new OCC rule will apply to this arrangement. And it does not say whether other fund platforms will get the same direct access.

Securitize is also expanding elsewhere. This year it launched tokenized U.S. stocks on Solana and began work with South Korea's LG CNS on tokenized funds and stablecoins. Whether those projects use the same bank-issued dollar leg is not stated.

Sources

• Unchained, 21 Oct 2026

How this post was made: an AI model drafted it from the sources listed above, and software checks ran before it went live without a human edit. Every figure has to match a listed source and no sentence is copied. It explains how the mechanism works; it is not investment advice.