Cryptocurrencies have surged Thursday morning following the Anchorage Digital Bank National Association conditional approval by the U.S Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), as the first federally chartered digital asset bank.
A banking charter would give Anchorage the clear authority to act as a “qualified custodian” for institutional investors under Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules and explicitly allowing it to do business in all 50 states.
Read: Anchorage obtains U.S federal Chartered Crypto bank approval – first in history
Bitcoin the most popular cryptocurrency and the largest by market capitalization surged past $38,000 to as much as $38,572.3 on Thursday
At 0808 GMT on Thursday, Bitcoin is trading at $38,552.0, up by 9.26% on the Investing.com Index, while Ethereum the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is trading at $1,168.01 up 7.85%.
Bitcoin Cash is up by 6.00% to $504.48
Chainlink is up by 9.77% to $16.01 and Litecoin is up by 8.12% to $150.181.
In the last 24 hours of writing this report, 1,510,065 Bitcoin valued at $58,477,862,644 has been traded according to Coinlore.
Read: NSE daily report: Market up by 0.11%, Insurance Index advance by 4.12%
“Having a national bank charter places Anchorage Digital Bank firmly on the same regulatory footing as other national banks in the country. Most immediately, it puts first-of-its-kind, sub-custody services within reach for any traditional financial institution that wishes to give its clients access to digital assets,” Anchorage said.
However, Anchorage warned that “holdings of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets are speculative and involve a substantial degree of risk, including the risk of complete loss.”
Bitcoin has continued to recover after Monday sell-off saw the price hit nearly $30,000. However, Bitcoin Whales bought into the deep amid the sell-off.
The number of bitcoin (BTC, +11.21%) “whale entities” – clusters of crypto wallet addresses held by a single network participant holding at least 1,000 BTC – rose slightly to a new record high of 2,140 on Monday according to Coindesk.
By: Ifunanya Ikueze
