Dogecoin custody: 144.8 million DOGE across two custodians, and what changes for ETP holders

The largest remaining Dogecoin fund in the United States no longer keeps its coins in a single place. In a supplement to its prospectus dated October 5, 2026, Grayscale told the US Securities and Exchange Commission that Anchorage Digital Bank N.A. may serve as an additional custodian for the trust's DOGE holdings. Coinbase Custody remains the primary custodian. Two days earlier the same issuer had switched on in-kind creations, and the day after tomorrow its competitor Bitwise closes its Dogecoin fund for good. For investors in Europe this is not an American footnote, because the question underneath it applies to every German Dogecoin product in exactly the same way: who holds the keys, and what happens if that one custodian fails?

DOGE traded at $0.086 on Monday midday, up 0.9 percent over 24 hours and down 9.5 percent over the week (CoinGecko, as of October 12). Market capitalisation stands at $13.4 billion, with $522 million changing hands in the most recent trading day. The price here is only the frame. The subject of the day is the custody chain, and unlike the price, that can actually be checked.

Grayscale adds Anchorage Digital as a second custodian

The filing is titled Prospectus Supplement No. 1 and amends the prospectus of April 16, 2026. Its operative wording states that Anchorage Digital may serve as an additional custodian for the trust's DOGE holdings (SEC filing on Form 424B3). Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC expressly remains the trust's primary custodian, and Coinbase, Inc. remains prime broker. The fund trades on NYSE Arca under the ticker GDOG.

A custodian is the entity that holds the private keys to a fund's coins and moves those coins on instruction. Adding a second one spreads the failure risk: if one entity drops out, through a hack, an insolvency or an order from a regulator, the entire holding no longer hangs on it. How much of the DOGE will actually move is left open. The document says the sponsor has not currently determined the aggregate amount of the trust's DOGE it will transfer to Anchorage Digital.

144,871,236 DOGE in the fund, 117.33 per share

The size of the holding is what makes the filing interesting. As of October 5, 2026, Grayscale reported 144,871,236.7167 Dogecoin for the trust, equal to 117.33314709 DOGE per share at a net asset value of $11.20 per share and assets under management of roughly $13.8 million. The issuer's own overview from October 7 shows $10.38 per share and $12.81 million, which reflects last week's weakness in the price.

Set against the open market: 144.9 million DOGE are worth around $12.5 million at the current price, roughly 2.4 percent of the daily turnover CoinGecko reports for Dogecoin. The fund is therefore no driver of the price, but it is a useful lesson in how professional custody is built.

The sixth amendment to the custody agreement, signed September 29

Legally, the addition rests on a change of contract. The sixth amendment to the Master Custody Service Agreement was signed on September 29, 2026; the original agreement dates from August 8, 2025. Only that amendment creates the framework in which a second custodian can stand alongside Coinbase at all.

The timing next to the second change of the same date is striking. Also with effect from September 29, 2026, the trust may create and redeem shares in kind, that is against delivery of DOGE rather than cash. The authorised participants for this are Virtu Americas LLC and Macquarie Capital (USA) Inc. In-kind settlement means more coin movement between market participants and the fund, and more movement demands more custody capacity. Splitting across two institutions fits that rebuild.

A $5 million liability cap for the additional custodian

To understand what such a split is worth, read the liability clause. For the additional custodian, liability under the contract is capped at the greater of $5 million or twelve months of fees. Measured against trust assets of $12.81 million, that cap covers a substantial share, but not the entire holding, and certainly not every loss automatically.

Two further figures from the same filing set the frame. The custodian must maintain crime insurance or fidelity coverage of at least $100 million in aggregate, and a threshold of $100 million applies per cold storage address. Cold storage means keys that have never touched the internet. The threshold limits how much value may sit at a single address, and is thus the technical counterpart to splitting across two institutions.

Trading in the Bitwise fund ends on October 14

While one issuer builds out its custody, the other withdraws. Bitwise announced the liquidation of its Dogecoin fund on September 10, 2026. According to the issuer, Wednesday, October 14, 2026, is the last trading day on NYSE Arca. On that day the fund's DOGE will be converted into cash, and no new shares will be created from before the market open on October 15.

Remaining shareholders will be paid the net asset value of their shares as of October 21 in cash, on October 22 according to the issuer. The filing on Form 8-K is more cautious and speaks of the holdings being liquidated on or shortly after October 22, 2026. The date is therefore expected, not promised. Bitwise says shareholders need take no action in the process. The fund had become tiny: Decrypt put its net assets at around $722,000 as of September 8.

In our October 10 piece on the wind-down of the Bitwise fund, DOGE stood at $0.0862; a day later, at the $57.2 million exchange outflow, it was $0.0868. Today it is $0.086. The announced closure has therefore moved the price by less than one percent over those two days, which should surprise nobody given a fund size of $722,000. What is new since October 10 is not the price reaction but the custody question on the other side of the market.

The German Dogecoin ETP rests on a single custodian

In Germany nobody gets at a US fund such as GDOG without further ado. Anyone who wants DOGE in a brokerage account buys an exchange-traded product, an ETP, which here is a bearer debt security with assets deposited behind it. The best known is the 21Shares Dogecoin ETP with ISIN CH1431521033 and German security number A4A5WJ, tradable in euros on Deutsche Boerse. The issuer describes it as 100 percent physically backed, with custody handled by BitGo Europe GmbH. A second product came to the Frankfurt exchange from Valour, security number A4AK2K.

The difference from the American filing sits precisely here: the German product names one custodian, not two. That is no weakness of the house but the usual construction of European crypto ETPs, and it has worked for years. It does mean, though, that the question of spreading the risk stays open for German holders while the American competitor is answering it right now.

In-kind instead of cash: the rebuild since September 29

The mechanism behind in-kind settlement is worth two sentences, because it works the same way at an ETP. If new shares are created against cash, somebody has to buy DOGE on the market, and that purchase leaves a trace in the order book. If they are created against delivery of coins, the DOGE move straight from the trading firm into custody without a market order ever appearing. For the price that means less visible pressure in either direction; for custody it means more deliveries in and out each day.

The same filing names the practical limits: the order cut-off is 3:59:59 p.m. New York time, and settlement runs T+1 or T+2, one or two trading days later. A German investor holding an ETP will find the equivalent deadlines in the key information document for that product, and they are rarely identical.

What custody costs per year, counted in euros

The convenience of a fund wrapper is paid for through the ongoing fee, and the spread between the routes is wide. For GDOG, the first-quarter 2026 report shows a sponsor fee of 0.35 percent annualised, once a temporary waiver has run out. The German 21Shares Dogecoin ETP costs 2.50 percent a year according to the issuer. Self-custody carries no ongoing fee, but a one-off cost for hardware and your own effort.

On a €1,000 stake, and with no price movement whatsoever, five years cost €0 under self-custody, around €17 in the US fund and around €119 in the German ETP. The fee is taken from the holding daily, so the share of coins behind each security keeps shrinking. GDOG makes that legible directly: 117.33314709 DOGE per share is a snapshot that gets smaller with every day.

Four entries in the key information document that put a number on your risk

The details that matter here are public in every product, just rarely in a prominent place. In the key information document and the prospectus for your ETP you will find four points that take minutes to look up: the name of the custodian and its domicile, whether there is one or several, the size of the insurance or of a liability cap, and whether there is a right to delivery of the coins. In a product with a single custodian, that custodian's creditworthiness decides your counterparty risk; with several, the risk is spread.

The benchmark from the American filing serves as a yardstick: insurance of at least $100 million, a cap per cold storage address, a quantified liability for the custodian. If your documents carry no figure for any of those points, that absence is the real information. If you are weighing the alternative and want to hold the keys yourself, the devices and their differences are in our hardware wallet comparison; the price of that route is that you secure the recovery phrase yourself and nobody can replace it for you.

Holding period for self-custody, withholding tax for the ETP

In tax terms the two routes diverge in Germany, and for most holders that difference is larger than any fee. Buying Dogecoin directly and holding it yourself falls under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act: after a holding period of more than one year, the gain from the private disposal is tax free, and within the year an exemption threshold of €1,000 applies.

For an ETP the classification is disputed. Because these are bearer debt securities, treatment as a capital investment under section 20 of the Income Tax Act is the obvious reading, which would mean 25 percent withholding tax regardless of the holding period. For physically backed products carrying a right to delivery of the coins, the specialist literature also argues for section 23. There is no ruling from the Federal Fiscal Court specifically on crypto ETPs. Anyone counting on the holding period should therefore ask the issuer or a tax adviser about the treatment before buying and document their acquisition data cleanly, for which the tools in our overview of tax software and portfolio trackers are suited.

What the switch says about the state of the Dogecoin market

Two filings within a few days draw the same picture from two directions. One issuer gives up because, after a good eleven months, barely any money sits in the product; another builds out its custody and opens share creation to in-kind delivery. That says nothing about the price, but something about the infrastructure: the number of products is falling, the quality of those left is rising.

For the price itself the picture stays thin. Dogecoin has lost 9.5 percent over the week and, at a market capitalisation of $13.4 billion, sits well below the large names. A change of custody creates no demand. It only lowers the probability that a technical or legal incident at a single service provider drags an entire fund down with it.

Our assessment of the split across two custodians

In the view of this desk, adding a second custodian is the more useful of the week's two events, for a reason that can be checked: the additional custodian's liability is quantified at a minimum of $5 million, the insurance requirement at $100 million, and the cold storage threshold caps concentration per address at $100 million. Three quantified figures an investor can hold up against their own product are worth more than any announcement without a number.

Against that stands the sponsor leaving open how much it will actually move. As long as the transferred share is not quantified, the split remains a possibility rather than a measured fact, and at assets under management of $12.81 million even a complete transfer would be a small matter financially. We therefore read the filing as a sign of the segment maturing, not as a reason to buy. Which route somebody picks depends on the holding period and on the willingness to secure keys personally, not on where the fund wrapper comes from.

Dogecoin custody: two addresses only lower custodian risk

Splitting across Coinbase Custody and Anchorage Digital changes a fund's counterparty risk, not the price risk of Dogecoin. If you want to take something from it for your own portfolio, work through it in this order. First: look up in the key information document for your product how many custodians are entered and whether a liability sum is quantified. Second: project the ongoing fee onto your intended holding period, because at 2.50 percent a year, five years take around €119 of €1,000 before the price has moved at all; the devices for the route without an ongoing fee are in the hardware wallet comparison. Third: settle the tax treatment of your route before you buy, and document the purchase date and acquisition cost from the outset, for instance with a tool from the overview of tax software and portfolio trackers.

(As of October 12, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy. Crypto investments can lead to a total loss.)