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1. Zerohash AUTH Goes Live at Money20/20
Zerohash, a Chicago-based crypto infrastructure company, launched a service called AUTH on October 19, 2026, at the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas. Zerohash AUTH lets people move digital assets between linked exchange accounts and self-custody wallets without copying a wallet address or choosing a blockchain network. The company says it supports more than 600 connections.
The announcement targets one of the most error-prone steps in crypto: sending funds. Today a transfer normally requires a user to copy a long string of letters and numbers, pick the correct network and hope neither was mistyped. AUTH replaces that routine with a sign-in and an approval inside an app that has integrated the product.
The launch also lands while Zerohash is waiting on a federal regulator. The company has an application pending for a national trust bank charter, and the new product gives it a consumer-facing feature to show alongside that filing.
2. What is Zerohash?
Zerohash is a crypto and stablecoin infrastructure provider founded in 2017 and headquartered in Chicago. It does not mainly serve individual traders directly. Instead, other companies connect to it through application programming interfaces and developer tools, and Zerohash handles the technical and regulatory work that sits behind a crypto feature.
That work covers custody, compliance, liquidity, settlement and blockchain connectivity. A firm that wants to let its customers buy, hold or send digital assets can rely on Zerohash for those functions instead of building them itself. The company already supplies crypto infrastructure to established financial firms, among them Morgan Stanley's E*Trade.
Its regulatory footprint is broad. Zerohash has operations in the European Union, Latin America, Bermuda and the United States, and according to its website it runs regulated entities in 51 U.S. jurisdictions. Earlier this year, acquisition talks between Zerohash and Mastercard fell through. At the time, the company was reportedly seeking to raise $250 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
3. How does AUTH work?
AUTH works as an authentication and account-linking layer. A user selects an account or wallet inside an app that offers the feature, signs in and approves the transfer. Zerohash then takes care of routing and settlement, so the person never sees an address field or a network menu.
The accounts that can be linked include exchange and brokerage accounts as well as self-custody wallets. Accounts connect only with the user's consent, a point that matters because the product spans two very different kinds of destination: custodial platforms, where a company holds the assets, and self-custody wallets, where the user holds the keys.
AUTH handles more than cryptocurrencies. Zerohash says it supports crypto assets, stablecoins and blockchain-based securities such as stock tokens. Each app that adopts the tool still decides which assets, accounts and transfer types it will allow, so the experience will differ from one integration to the next.
The company describes the goal as reducing the number of steps needed to move funds. Reporting on the launch indicates that the product packages functionality Zerohash had previously offered in beta into a formal release, rather than starting from nothing.
4. Why do wallet addresses and network choices cause problems?
A wallet address is a long alphanumeric string that identifies where a transfer should go, and blockchain transactions are generally irreversible. A single wrong character, or a payment sent on the wrong network, can mean funds that are difficult or impossible to recover. That is why careful users double-check addresses and often send a small test payment first.
Alex LaPrade, the chief executive of a popular non-custodial Ethereum and multi-chain wallet, said transfers into wallets have required repeated address checks and test payments. He called this "one of the biggest points of friction" that AUTH is meant to address.
The friction is not only a nuisance. For newcomers, the combination of addresses, networks and irreversible settlement is a frequently cited barrier to using digital assets for everyday payments. Card payments and bank transfers hide this complexity behind familiar interfaces, and products such as AUTH are an attempt to give crypto transfers a similar feel.
Self-custody makes the issue sharper. A user who moves funds between an exchange and a personal wallet carries the full responsibility for the destination, since no intermediary can reverse a mistake. Linking the two accounts once, with explicit permission, shifts that burden from the user's memory and clipboard to the software.
5. Why does account linking matter for the wider industry?
Crypto adoption has long been described as a user-experience problem as much as a technology problem. Exchanges, brokerages and wallets each keep their own interface, and moving value between them has meant leaving one app, opening another and bridging the gap by hand. A shared linking layer promises to make those separate services behave more like parts of one system.
Banking offers a loose comparison. Customers can connect an account at one institution to an app at another, approve access once and then move money without retyping account numbers. AUTH applies a similar idea to digital assets, with Zerohash acting as the party that handles routing and settlement between the linked accounts.
The inclusion of tokenized securities is a notable part of that picture. As stock tokens and other blockchain-based securities become more common, the same transfer problems apply to them, and a tool that treats them as one more asset type could reduce the number of separate processes users must learn.
For app developers, the appeal is practical. A company that integrates AUTH can offer deposits and withdrawals without building its own address-handling and network-selection screens, and can rely on Zerohash for the compliance and settlement work behind them. That fits the firm's existing model of supplying infrastructure through APIs to other businesses.
There are open questions that a launch announcement cannot settle. Linking a custodial account to a self-custody wallet through a third party adds another piece of software to the chain of trust, and users will want to know how consent is recorded, how it can be withdrawn and what protections apply if something goes wrong. The company has stressed user permission and control, but has not published security details in the launch materials.
6. Which platforms and wallets does AUTH support?
Zerohash says AUTH supports more than 600 connections, naming Coinbase, Robinhood, Gemini, MetaMask and Phantom among them. Coinbase, Robinhood and Gemini are live, while Kraken is in beta, which means that integration has not yet been described as fully available.
The figure is dominated by wallets. Zerohash's developer documentation lists 639 wallets and four exchange or brokerage accounts, so the large majority of connections lead to self-custody software rather than to trading platforms. Because these numbers come from the company itself, they describe what the network can reach rather than how much activity it has handled.
For users, the practical effect depends on where they already hold assets. Someone with an account at one of the live exchanges and a wallet such as MetaMask or Phantom could link the two and move funds between them from inside a supporting app, while someone whose platform is not yet connected would continue to use the manual address process.
The announcement did not include pricing, fee details, security specifics or a rollout timeline for individual apps. Those details will matter to the companies deciding whether to build AUTH into their own products, and to users deciding how much trust to place in a new linking layer.
7. Who leads AUTH?
Ryan Beaudry has been named general manager of AUTH. He was previously executive vice president of global product and operations for open finance at Mastercard, a background in payments networks that fits a product designed to make moving money feel routine.
Beaudry said that onchain rails scale once users stop thinking about the underlying technology, and that "usability, trust and control is the inflection point for mass adoption." The statement reflects the company's emphasis on user permission and control, and on making the blockchain layer invisible to the person making a transfer.
The appointment also echoes the failed Mastercard acquisition talks mentioned above. Even without a deal, Zerohash has recruited a senior executive from the payments giant to run one of its main consumer-facing products.
8. How does the trust charter application fit in?
Zerohash is seeking a national trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the federal regulator that supervises national banks. In July, the OCC returned the company's application, a step it takes when it considers a filing materially deficient. Zerohash described the return as an administrative process.
The company refiled a narrower application on August 18, and that application remains pending. A federal trust charter would give a crypto firm a single national framework in place of a patchwork of state-by-state approvals, which is why several digital asset companies have pursued one.
Launching AUTH during that review lets Zerohash present itself as an infrastructure provider that combines new consumer-facing tools with regulated operations. The OCC has not announced a decision, and nothing in the product launch changes the status of the application.
9. What comes next for Zerohash and AUTH?
The next milestones are the OCC's decision on the narrower charter application and the completion of the Kraken integration, which is still in beta. Neither has a published date.
Adoption will also depend on how many apps choose to add AUTH, since the product only reaches users through the companies that integrate it. Each of those firms will set its own rules for supported assets, accounts and transfer types, and the breadth of that uptake will show whether address-free transfers become a common feature or remain a niche option.