Anchorage Digital receives $100 million investment from the company with the world’s largest stablecoin

The cryptocurrency bank Anchorage Digital, founded by Portuguese entrepreneur Diogo Mónica, announced on Thursday that it had raised an investment of $100 million (around €85 million) from the American company Tether, which issues the world’s best-known stablecoin.

The new funding from Tether, “the largest company in the digital asset ecosystem”, raises Anchorage Digital’s valuation to $4.2 billion (approximately €3.6 billion). The money is being used to conduct the first private sale of shares to employees of the San Francisco-based company.

Anchorage Digital co-founder and chairman Diogo Mónica says that selling securities to employees provides “liquidity to team members who have helped build the company over nearly a decade”. In a post on LinkedIn, the chairman admits that this moment is at the ‘top of the list’ in the life of Anchorage Digital, founded in 2017.

For Anchorage Digital co-founder and CEO Nathan McCauley, this investment is the result of “years of careful execution” and is “a strong sign of conviction from one of the most scalable and sophisticated operators in the digital asset ecosystem”. “At the same time, the launch of our first employee share offering allows us to reward the ‘builders’ who believed in us from the beginning”, added the American manager, who heads the executive committee.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino chose to explain that his company – in the area of cryptocurrencies linked to fiat currency (stablecoins) – “exists to challenge the status quo and build global infrastructure for freedom”. “Our investment in Anchorage Digital reflects a shared belief in the importance of secure, transparent and resilient financial systems. Anchorage Digital has set the standard for institutional digital asset infrastructure and stablecoin issuance in the United States, and we are pleased to support its continued growth”, he said.

Tether has a cryptocurrency called Tether Dollar (USDT) and a business model of parity with the US currency. In practice, US Treasury bonds (debt) are purchased, Tether keeps this money in a vault, and when someone wants it back, it sells the bonds and returns the value, ensuring a 1:1 (one-to-one) conversion rate.

The investment by Tether, created in 2014 in San Salvador, comes five months after choosing the Portuguese-American unicorn (Anchorage Digital Bank) as the issuer of its stablecoin in the United States.