Anchored aStocks (Anchored Capital Ltd, BVI)

Summary

Ketju does not approve Anchored aStocks: Anchored Capital Ltd bars US persons, a first direct mint costs $100,000, and the holder’s claim runs through two offshore layers whose governing documents are not public. Anchored sells tokens on 80 US stocks and ETFs, named with an ”a” before the ticker: aAAPL for Apple, aBIL for the SPDR 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF. Anchored Capital Ltd, a British Virgin Islands company, issues them. Each token is, in Anchored’s words, a receipt for ”a beneficial entitlement, under a bare trust, to underlying fund shares.” The fund is Anchored Finance SPC, a Cayman segregated portfolio company. It buys the stock through a US broker that Anchored does not name. The holder owns no share and has no vote and no claim on the company. The contracts are unverified upgradeable proxies, and one private key controls the upgrade, pause and denylist powers.

Review triggers
• Anchored publishes the token terms, trust instrument and SPC offering memorandum
• Anchored names its US broker-dealer and custodian
• The beacon, factory or compliance contracts are verified and their keys move to a multisig
• The tokens open to US persons

Ketju checks this memo every night and opens a review if its venues or files show a warning or a cited document changes. The first confirmation is due 2027-03-23.

Research

How it works

Anchored’s FAQ names four companies. Anchored Capital Ltd, of the BVI, ”is the issuer of Anchored tokenized products unless a specific product document states otherwise” and runs the app. Anchored Finance SPC is ”the CIMA registered segregated portfolio company used as the underlying fund vehicle.” Anchored Labs Ltd builds the software and runs the website. Anchored Advisors Ltd is a BVI FSC Approved Manager. Third parties provide brokerage and custody. The overview says the shares are ”held through a U.S.-regulated broker-dealer with direct clearing membership,” but no page names the firm.

The holder’s claim passes through three links. A buyer pays USDC, and the broker buys the stock for a segregated portfolio of the SPC. Anchored Capital holds the SPC’s fund shares on bare trust, and the token is the receipt for that trust interest. A segregated portfolio is meant to separate its assets from the other portfolios and from Anchored’s own creditors. A bare trust keeps the fund shares out of Anchored Capital’s estate. Both protections depend on documents we have not seen: the trust instrument, the portfolio’s offering memorandum and the token terms. Anchored’s own website terms say the rights attaching to each token ”are set out in the applicable governing documents.” Anchored shows those documents only to onboarded users in its gated app.

What a holder owns

The FAQ states: ”A holder owns a token issued by Anchored Capital Ltd representing a beneficial entitlement, under a bare trust, to underlying fund shares, which in turn provide economic exposure to the corresponding underlying stock or ETF.” The overview adds that the tokens ”do not confer voting rights, shareholder communications, or any direct legal claim against the issuer of the underlying equity.” Anchored pays dividends in USDC ”net of taxes, fees and operational costs” to the wallet tied to the holder’s Anchored account. The docs do not say whether Anchored recognises a buyer who takes a token on chain, with no Anchored account, as a beneficiary or pays that buyer dividends. Backpack’s similar receipts expressly refuse such buyers. Anchored’s docs do not answer the question.

Accountable provides the proof of reserves. Anchored says Accountable reads the custody accounts by API and checks every 15 minutes that shares held match or exceed tokens issued. That check counts shares. It does not show who owns them if Anchored or the broker fails.

Size and holdings

On 23 September 2026 we read about 5,210 aBIL on chain, nearly all on Monad, worth about $477,000. The next largest tokens hold a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands each.

Eligibility

Anchored sells to ”professional and qualified investors,” after KYC for individuals or KYB for entities. It bars the United States outright: persons ”classified as ’U.S. persons’ (as defined under Regulation S …) … are prohibited from acquiring or redeeming Anchored tokens.” Anchored also bars Canada, mainland China, Russia and a list of sanctioned or high-risk countries. The docs state the minimum twice, with different figures. The investment page asks $100,000 in USDC for a first mint and nothing after. The fee schedule says USD 90 directly and USD 1 through partners.

Fees

Anchored charges 10 basis points to mint and 21 basis points to withdraw.

Withdrawals

A holder redeems in the app. Anchored burns the token, sells the stock and pays net proceeds in USDC, ”subject to fees, liquidity, market hours, partner rules and compliance checks.” Trading runs 24 hours on weekdays, but redemption with Anchored waits for US market hours. A holder without an account can only sell the token to someone else, on chain or on a partner exchange that Anchored does not name.

Who controls it

We read aBIL at 0x4FC5…576f on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum and Monad on 23 September 2026. Each aStock is a beacon proxy. The beacon, 0xfe29…5dd8, points every token to one implementation (a different build on Arbitrum). A single change to the beacon therefore rewrites all 80 tokens at once. The beacon’s owner is a proxy contract, and that contract’s owner is 0xcb43…2000, an ordinary key with no multisig code. The implementation source is not verified on Sourcify or Blockscout. We therefore mark the allowlist, freeze, pause and clawback questions unverified.

The bytecode shows more than we can prove without source. The token names a FACTORY and a COMPLIANCE contract and reverts with ”TransferPaused” and ”RedemptionPaused.” The factory holds each token’s admin role. It has pause() and a TOKEN_PAUSE_ROLE, which another plain key, 0x97b5…1d6f, holds. The compliance contract keeps a denylist (addToDenylist, requireNotBlocked), and the same 0xcb43… key is its admin. Each token has two minters and two burners, which are contracts that Anchored runs. Anchored’s docs agree: ”Administrators can pause transfers during emergencies,” and the platform may ”freeze addresses or block prohibited transactions.” Without the source, we cannot tell whether a burner can burn a holder’s balance without consent.

Comparison

Anchored’s structure is closest to Backpack’s: a BVI issuer that holds the assets on bare trust. Backpack at least publishes its issuer terms and says whom it recognises, although those terms are bad for holders. xStocks and bTokens are notes under a published prospectus. Coinbase’s certificates name the custodian, Alpaca. Anchored names neither the broker nor the terms. It adds a Cayman fund layer between the holder and the stock, and it runs its keys from single addresses. Of the stock-token programs Ketju has reviewed, Anchored publishes among the fewest documents.

Sources

Each claim above comes from one of these sources. Where Ketju could not verify a number, the memo states that.

• Anchored docs: FAQs · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: four Anchored entities and roles, bare trust over fund shares, no voting, freeze and pause powers, redemption mechanics, not for US persons or mainland China
• Anchored docs: Overview · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: US broker-dealer with direct clearing, no claim on the underlying issuer, segregated portfolio
• Anchored docs: Anchored Tokens (contract list) · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: 80 stock and ETF tokens, 3 fund tokens, same address on four chains, administrators can pause
• Anchored docs: Eligibility · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: professional and qualified investors, Reg S US persons barred, prohibited countries
• Anchored docs: Investment & Redemption · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: $100,000 first mint, $10 minimum redemption, USDC in and out
• Anchored docs: Fees & Taxes · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: 10 bps mint, 21 bps withdrawal, USD 90 and USD 1 minimums
• Anchored Labs Ltd: Terms of Use (August 2026) · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: governing documents are separate and prevail, app run by Anchored Capital Ltd
• aBIL beacon proxy on Base (Blockscout; implementation unverified) · primary · accessed 2026-09-23
  Supports: beacon 0xfe29…5dd8, FACTORY and COMPLIANCE contracts, role holders read on chain, supply by chain

The asset and the chain

This memo covers the protocol. A position also holds an asset and settles on a chain. Whichever of the three holds the most power over the position decides who can freeze it. These tables describe control and do not judge quality.