Who controls it
Anchorage Digital Bank issues and redeems USAT for bank clients, administers a segregated reserve trust, and may delay, restrict, or refuse transactions for law, risk, or operations.
- Backing
- Reserve assets held for USAT through the bank’s disclosed reserve trust and custody framework.
- Holder’s claim
- USAT is a token claim that the bank administers. It is neither an FDIC-insured deposit nor direct ownership of the reserve trust.
- Redemption or sale
- Direct redemption is limited to eligible Anchorage clients and may be delayed, restricted, or refused under published policies.
Dependencies
- Anchorage Digital Bank
- Tether branding and commercial arrangement
- Reserve trust and custodians
- Bank-client eligibility
Losses and incidents
- We found no control, reserve, or redemption incident in the sources we reviewed.
Advisor notes
Controlling party: Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A., under the USAT arrangement with Tether. Check whether the client can redeem directly with the issuer. Holding the token on chain leaves every reserve, custody, contract, and legal dependency in place.
A named organization or administrator controls issuance, transfers, reserves, redemption, or address restrictions. This grade can sit beside a sound reserve, a useful product, or a fitting role in a client account. It records who can act on the token and passes no judgment on the product.
Questions before use
- Does the exact contract and chain match the instrument reviewed here?
- Which party can mint, burn, pause, upgrade, block, or redeem?
- Does the client have direct redemption access or only secondary liquidity?
- What protocol, bridge, wallet, and custodian dependencies are added?
- Which event would force a review or a sale?
Sources
- Anchorage: USAT policies and disclosures · primary
- DefiLlama: Stablecoins circulation dataset · secondary
Issuers can change their documents and product terms. This page gives our reading of control as of 2026-08-19. Check the current terms before a client buys.
Legend: No freeze key: no issuer or administrator can freeze an address at this layer · Governed, no freeze: on-chain collateral and governance set the terms, but no issuer blocklist exists · Mixed control: on-chain mechanisms sit beside custodians, real-world assets, a central transaction orderer, or other parties a court or regulator can compel · Issuer can freeze: a named organization or administrator controls issuance, transfers, reserves, redemption, or address restrictions. How grading works.