Anchorage Digital has announced an integration with Binance to bring off-exchange settlement to institutional crypto traders, giving clients access to the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume without surrendering custody of their assets.
The partnership, powered by Atlas — Anchorage Digital’s suite of settlement infrastructure — marks the first off-exchange settlement implementation within that platform. Under the arrangement, institutions can trade on Binance while their assets remain in segregated custody at Anchorage Digital Bank, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States.
The structure mirrors how institutional trading works in traditional financial markets, where custody and execution are kept separate. In those markets, assets are held with a custodian and transferred only at final settlement — never sitting on the balance sheet of the trading venue. Crypto has long lacked that separation, requiring institutions to pre-fund exchange accounts and accept counterparty exposure to the venue itself.
“Institutions need crypto market structure that reflects the standards they already rely on in traditional finance,” said Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital in a note to Bitcoin Magazine. “Off-Exchange Settlement, powered by Atlas, is designed to separate custody from execution, helping institutions access exchange liquidity while keeping assets in secure custody.”
The arrangement also allows institutions to pledge both crypto assets and USD accounts as collateral, enabling capital deployment while satisfying trading margin requirements — an approach consistent with workflows at traditional financial firms.
Binance has been building out its institutional infrastructure over the past several years, expanding triparty banking and collateral management offerings for professional clients. The Anchorage Digital integration extends that effort.
“Working with Anchorage Digital gives institutional clients another way to access Binance liquidity while managing custody and collateral through a model that is more familiar to traditional financial markets,” said Catherine Chen, Head of VIP & Institutional at Binance.
Crypto adoption and off-exchange settlement
Atlas is designed to support a range of institutional workflows beyond off-exchange settlement, including trading, lending, collateral management, and other capital markets functions.
Anchorage Digital says the platform is built for the current phase of institutional crypto adoption, where firms entering the market have compliance, custody, and operational requirements that earlier crypto infrastructure was not designed to meet.
Anchorage Digital is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs, KKR, GIC, and Visa, and carries a valuation of $4.2 billion.
In addition to Anchorage Digital Bank N.A., the company operates through Anchorage Digital Singapore, licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and Anchorage Digital NY, which holds a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services.