Digital Asset Custodian Anchorage Now Supports Cosmos (ATOM) Custody and Trading

The crypto custodian Anchorage has just added support for Cosmos, meaning it now allows their clients to trade and store Cosmos tokens on the platform that it runs.

Staking services for Cosmos will also soon be launched, said Diogo Mónica, the co-founder and President of Anchorage. The company is based in San Francisco and different from other custodians it competes with because it offers custody and staking services for tokens like Tezos, Stellar, Zcash and many others.

The Cosmos Protocol Differs from Other PoS Mechanisms

Talking about the Cosmos protocol, Mónica had this to say:

“The Cosmos protocol is different than Tezos or any of the other proof of stake mechanisms. If you want to compound growth, Tezos protocol requires you to redelegate by using the onchain key so the key that holds the assets has to actively participate.”

Users holding Cosmos tokens in large amounts aren’t advantaged from a security point of view by an exposure of the private key straight onchain, so Anchorage is saying that it supports re-delegation while the private keys are kept in its hardware security modules. Mónica explained,

“One of the things that is unique about Anchorage is that our platform allows us to use the private keys from the safety of air-gapped hardware security modules without exposing them to the risk of being directly connected to the internet.”

Anchorage Also Acquired Merkle Data

Anchorage has also launched this year in January an institutional investors’ crypto platform and acquired Merkle Data, the famous data analysis company. These 2 moves are indicating that it’s looking to expand and to focus more on providing custodial services to institutions. Besides, the fact that it’s adding more features such as trading shows that it’s trying to make crypto more mainstream.

The acquisition of Merkle Data will expand Anchorage’s reach. The startup has been working a lot to create new services and improve the already existing ones over the past year. For instance, in October 2019 it added an on-chain voting governance platform, only a few months after introducing its clients holding Tezos and Stellar to “baking”.