Anchorage Partners with Spotex

A new foundation for crypto market structure.
Anchorage Digital, home to America's first federally regulated crypto bank, is launching Coordinated Multiparty Settlement (CMS), a new infrastructure built for institutional crypto trading

CMS is powered by Atlas, a network designed to help institutions mitigate counterparty and operational risk when trading, borrowing, and lending digital assets. Building on that foundation, CMS brings digital asset trading into the same structure that underpins traditional finance, where custody, execution, and credit are separated across specialized participants, and settlement is coordinated across the network.

Today, much of crypto trading still occurs on offshore, vertically integrated platforms, where a single venue acts as exchange, custodian, and settlement agent. Client assets are often held in commingled omnibus wallets and titled to the exchange, rather than segregated and held in the name of the underlying client. While this model accelerated early market growth, it also introduced heightened counterparty risk and limited participation from traditional institutions.

That model is increasingly out of step with how institutions are accustomed to operating in markets. CMS powered by Atlas offers a regulated, modular infrastructure layer that lets institutions access non-custodial crypto markets through familiar workflows while streamlining post-trade settlement across clients, counterparties, and venues

A market structure institutions recognize
CMS enables a structure familiar to traditional markets like foreign exchange (FX)

• Exchanges and other non-custodial venues operate as non-custodial matching engines
• Prime brokers and intermediaries manage credit, margin, and client relationships
• Anchorage Digital provides qualified custody and coordinated settlement through its independent, federally-regulated bank

This separation of roles aligns digital asset trading with the established infrastructure, regulatory frameworks, and internal risk models already used by banks, hedge funds, and market infrastructure providers. Rather than requiring institutions to adapt to unfamiliar crypto-native workflows, CMS enables digital asset trading and settlement to operate in a way that mirrors the systems they already trust.

How coordinated settlement works
CMS serves as the settlement layer connecting trading venues, prime brokers, and market participants. Clients access markets through prime brokers, who manage client balances, provide credit facilities, and facilitate direct trading relationships between participants. Prime brokers may choose to act as bilateral counterparties to one another, while trade matching occurs on non-custodial venues.

Assets remain in custody at Anchorage Digital throughout the lifecycle of the trade. CMS ingests trading activity across venues, verifies obligations between participants, and coordinates netted settlement once all sides are fully funded. This model replaces fragmented, pre-funded workflows with a coordinated process where capital is deployed efficiently and settlement is completed with minimized counterparty exposure.

The result is a familiar institutional workflow: clients trade through prime relationships, access liquidity across venues, and rely on a regulated custodian to coordinate settlement and safeguard assets.

Reducing counterparty risk and improving settlement efficiency
Traditional crypto market structure requires participants to pre-fund trading venues, introducing exposure to platform risk while locking up capital across multiple venues. CMS, by Atlas, eliminates that requirement.

By coordinating settlement across participants and verifying funding before execution, CMS reduces the need to prefund each leg individually and minimizes the number of asset transfers required to settle trades.

Launching with leading market infrastructure partners
CMS powered by Atlas is being rolled out with an initial set of institutional venues. Spotex, a leading FX ECN processing billions in daily volume, will be among the first to offer crypto trading through this infrastructure. Additional venues across both traditional and digital asset markets are in development.

"The future of digital asset markets will increasingly resemble traditional financial markets, with a clear separation between execution, custody, and credit intermediation. Working with Anchorage Digital enables Spotex Digital to bring crypto trading into that institutional framework-something our clients have been waiting for as the market continues to mature" - John Miesner, CEO of Spotex.

Each new integration expands access, deepens liquidity, and increases the efficiency of the network of participants connected through Atlas.

Extending Atlas as core market infrastructure
This launch advances Atlas as a platform for institutional digital asset activity. By combining regulated custody, coordinated settlement, and exchange connectivity, Anchorage Digital is establishing a standardized infrastructure layer for digital and tokenized markets, spanning spot crypto today and broader tokenized asset classes over time.

The next phase of digital asset adoption will be defined by infrastructure that meets institutional standards for risk, compliance, and operational control.

CMS powered by Atlas represents a step toward that future, enabling participants to access crypto markets through the same market structure that underpins traditional FX and Fixed Income with settlement designed to minimize risk and maximize capital efficiency.

Anchorage Digital is a global crypto platform that enables institutions to participate in digital assets through trading, staking, custody, governance, settlement, stablecoin issuance, and the industry's leading security infrastructure.

For more information, visit www.anchorage.com

Spotex is a leading institutional liquidity and trade execution platform serving the FX and digital asset markets. The company provides sophisticated market participants with access to deep liquidity pools, advanced execution algorithms, and comprehensive market analytics. With a decade of proven performance in traditional FX markets, Spotex has expanded its platform to serve the growing institutional cryptocurrency market.

For more information, visit www.spotex.com