Thank you kindly for coming, and a warm welcome to you all. Some people have the very pleasant problem of having money but nowhere to put it. Today, I’ll tell you a tale about TRON and a vault at an American bank.
“Jinbei, are you there? They say a bank vault has opened on TRON, and the whole neighborhood’s in an uproar!”
“Oh, Kii, is that you? That’s a story about Anchorage Digital. On March 26, 2026, they announced support for TRON and began offering custody—meaning safekeeping—for TRX. They did so both on their regulated platform and through Porto, their self-custody wallet. On July 14, they expanded their services to include native staking for TRX and custody for TRC-20 assets. They’re opening the door in three stages: custody, tokens, and operations. That’s the kind of caution you’d expect from a bank.”
“That Anchorage Digital, is it really such a big deal?”
“It’s more than a big deal. Anchorage Digital Bank, its core business, became the first federally chartered crypto bank in the U.S. when it received a national bank charter from the OCC in January 2021. Its investors include Andreessen Horowitz, GIC, Goldman Sachs, KKR, and Visa, and it’s valued at $4.2 billion. Wall Street’s keepers of the vault have put TRON on the books as an asset in their custody.”
“But what good is a vault if nobody wants to buy anything?”
“That’s the point. The barrier for institutional investors isn’t whether they want to buy—it’s where they can keep it. They have a fiduciary duty to safeguard other people’s money, so an unregulated place to hold it is out of the question from the start. What TRON lacked wasn’t demand, but a place to keep it. According to a TRON DAO report, stablecoin payment volume in the third quarter of 2026 reached $2.2126 trillion, up 5.1% from the previous quarter, with a daily average of over $24 billion. The combined supply of USDT and USDD stood at $93.88 billion. On September 23, cumulative transaction volume surpassed $30 trillion. And on September 9, TRXS, a staking-based TRX ETF, was listed on Cboe. Rewards vary depending on the terms, but in one year, all three routes came together: hold it in custody, put it to work and earn more, or buy it through a securities account.”
Now, this tale actually played out once before, four hundred years ago.
“In the early 17th century, Amsterdam was a crossroads of world trade. But hundreds of different coins circulated around the city, and there were swindlers who shaved down their edges to lower their value. There was plenty of money, but nobody could fully trust it.”
“That’s just like stablecoins today, isn’t it?”
“Exactly. So, on January 31, 1609, the Bank of Amsterdam—the Wisselbank—opened its doors. It inspected coins and recorded them in its books as bank money, in accordance with minting standards. It decreed that bills of exchange worth 600 guilders or more had to be settled there. All the big merchants opened accounts, and Amsterdam became the heart of European finance. No wonder modern economists call it a ‘rigid stablecoin.’ In the first half of the 18th century, bank money traded at a premium of 4–5% over coins in circulation. The silver content was the same, but just being on the books made it more valuable. Trust has a price.”
“Well, sounds like it was all good, then.”
“But during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, the bank overextended its loans to the East India Company and lost people’s trust. By 1795, it had effectively collapsed. Trust isn’t a medal you earn once and then keep forever; you have to polish it every day. Anchorage’s cautious, gradual opening of its doors under the OCC’s watch is the flip side of that lesson. In the history of money, status always comes after scale. 2026 will be remembered as the year TRON gained both.”
“I see. So, Jinbei, if I leave my money in that bank too, will it be worth 4–5% more?”
“No, no. Your credit’s already been shaved down to nothing by all those tabs you’ve run up around the neighborhood.”
Best to polish your credit before it gets shaved away. And that’s the end of our tale.”