Chainlink launches CustodySync with Anchorage: “Institutions should not have to choose between qualified custody and on-chain liquidity”

On October 26, 2026 Chainlink presented a product called CustodySync. It is meant to make crypto holdings that sit with a qualified custodian usable as collateral for loans in DeFi markets, without the coins leaving the custodian. The launch partner is Anchorage Digital Bank. The price of Chainlink stood at $11.86 on Wednesday morning, around 5 percent above the previous day. For you as a retail investor, CustodySync is not a product you can sign up for. It is aimed at institutions. It is interesting all the same, because it touches the question of what the LINK token is needed for, and because it bears on three points that apply to small portfolios too: who holds the keys, what happens when collateral is realised, and how a loan against crypto holdings is treated for tax. Chainlink CustodySync at a glance: custodied holdings become loan collateral A DeFi lending market is a program on a blockchain that collects deposits and lends them out against collateral, without a bank on the other side. A custodian, by contrast, safeguards the private keys for its clients, and "qualified" in this context means it holds a licence from a supervisory authority for doing so. Between these two wor...