What It Actually Takes to Work Directly with Institutional Custodians #
Most people assume if you have enough money, you can open an account anywhere. With institutional Cryptocurrency custodians like Anchorage Digital, that’s not how it works.
The minimum to work directly with Anchorage outside of partner programs isn’t really about account minimums. It’s about institutional status. You need a qualifying entity structure and the Governance infrastructure that comes with it.
What Institutional Status Actually Means
Anchorage expects you to show up as an LLC, trust, fund, or pension plan with proper legal formation. Not a personal account. Not a simple revocable trust you set up with LegalZoom. A real institutional entity with audited financials, comprehensive entity documentation, and Compliance controls.
They want to see your KYC/AML procedures. Who verifies customer identities? How do you screen for sanctions? What’s your process for monitoring transactions? These aren’t optional nice-to-haves. They’re requirements for onboarding.
You need a substantial asset threshold before they’ll engage direct Custody services. The exact number varies, but we’re talking about assets and Governance that justify full institutional onboarding. If you’re an individual with $5 million or even $20 million but no institutional structure, you’re not getting a direct relationship.
Why the Barrier Exists
Institutional custodians built their infrastructure for other institutions. Their Compliance teams expect to interface with your Compliance team. Their operations desk expects you to have proper authorization matrices and approval workflows. Their legal department expects entity-level agreements with sophisticated representations and warranties.
The onboarding process alone takes months. Anchorage reviews your entity documents, validates your beneficial owners, assesses your internal controls, and evaluates whether you meet their risk standards. They’re not set up to do this for hundreds of individual accounts. The economics don’t work and the operational burden is too high.
This is why retail clients and even high-net-worth individuals go through intermediaries like Anchorage DWP or partner platforms. The intermediary already passed institutional onboarding. They maintain the Compliance infrastructure. They handle the Custody relationship. You get access to institutional-grade security without building institutional-grade Governance.
What This Means for Wealth Management Structure
The Custody access question connects directly to how you structure wealth management. If you’re managing $50 million across traditional and digital assets, you probably don’t want to build the Compliance department and legal entity structure needed for direct institutional custody relationships.
You want someone who already has those relationships in place.
Registered investment advisors working with qualified custodians solve this problem for traditional assets. The RIA uses Fidelity or Schwab, which already cleared institutional onboarding decades ago. You benefit from institutional Custody without becoming an institution yourself.
For digital assets, the same logic applies. Working through a partner program gives you access to Anchorage-level security through an intermediary that handles the institutional requirements.
When You Actually Need Direct Relationships
Direct institutional Custody makes sense when you’re operating at true institutional scale. Family offices managing $500 million across multiple entities. Endowments with complex Governance. Operating companies holding significant digital assets on their balance sheet.
At that level, you probably have in-house counsel, a CFO, and Compliance staff. Building the infrastructure for direct Custody relationships becomes worth it because you’re already operating like an institution.
For everyone else, the intermediary model is cleaner. You get institutional Custody without institutional overhead.
How This Fits Into Comprehensive Wealth Management
Digital Wealth Partners provides RIA services with access to institutional Custody solutions for both traditional and digital assets. Clients benefit from fiduciary-level investment advisory, financial planning, and proper asset Custody without needing to build institutional infrastructure themselves.
For families dealing with complex multi-Generational Wealth, Digital Ascension Group coordinates the full scope through Family Office services. This includes evaluating Custody arrangements across asset types, structuring entities appropriately, overseeing tax strategy, and managing Estate Planning. The focus is getting you the right Custody solutions without forcing you to become a Compliance department.
The institutional Custody infrastructure exists to protect serious wealth. Accessing it efficiently means working through advisors and intermediaries who already navigated the institutional onboarding process.
Contact Digital Ascension Group to learn how our Family Office services can coordinate your complete financial picture.
