Anchorage Digital Bank announced on September 16, 2026, custody support for seven assets issued on the Etherlink network, including xU3O8 — a token that embeds fractional ownership of physical concentrated uranium, known as yellowcake, the essential feedstock for nuclear fuel production. It is the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States to offer this service.
The supported assets include, alongside xU3O8, wrapped XTZ (WXTZ), the liquid staking token stXTZ, the stablecoins USDT, USDC and USDSM, and wrapped Ether (WETH). Institutional clients already active on Anchorage can access these tokens through their existing segregated accounts, with no need to set up a separate custody workflow. Etherlink is an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible layer-2 network that settles transactions on Tezos.
The mechanics of xU3O8 are straightforward. Each token corresponds to a share of physical U3O8 held by Cameco — one of the world’s largest uranium producers — in regulated storage facilities. The legal structure is built on an English law trust and a dual-registry system. The physical uranium was sourced by Curzon Uranium, while the Uranium.io platform manages the on-chain infrastructure on Etherlink through smart contracts. The token’s market capitalization stands just above $9 million, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Institutional interest in this asset is not emerging in a vacuum. Direct access to physical uranium has historically required specialized intermediaries, settlement cycles that can stretch over weeks, and high minimum investment thresholds. Tokenization compresses those timelines to a matter of minutes and lowers the barriers to entry, opening the market to a broader universe of institutional investors. Anchorage explicitly cited nuclear power generation as the backdrop driving institutional demand for uranium exposure.
Anchorage is not the first regulated custodian to move in this direction. In August 2025, Hex Trust had integrated Etherlink, adding custody for xU3O8 and other assets on the network. With Anchorage’s entry, the token now has two institutionally compliant custodians. The infrastructure is consolidating around a niche but strategically coherent asset: uranium is a critical commodity for nuclear energy, operationally difficult to handle in physical form, and tokenization resolves much of that complexity.
If institutional adoption of tokenized real-world assets continues on this trajectory, uranium could become a reference model for other energy commodity markets that still lack comparable digital infrastructure. The blueprint — verifiable physical reserves, regulated custody, fast on-chain settlement — is replicable. The question is how many other federally chartered custodians will follow Anchorage’s lead in the months ahead.
