- The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued preliminary approvals for these licenses.
- The national trust bank designation gives these firms federal recognition but does not allow them to operate as full commercial banks.
US regulators granted conditional national trust bank charters to five prominent crypto players. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued the approvals for national trust bank charters to Circle Internet Group, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos, Bloomberg reported.
Circle and Ripple received de novo national trust bank charters, while BitGo, Fidelity’s digital asset arm, and Paxos won permission to convert existing state trust charters into national ones.
The new charters give the crypto firms a direct presence in the federal banking system without turning them into full-service commercial banks. As national trust banks, they can offer custody and related fiduciary services for digital assets, but they still cannot take deposits, offer checking or savings accounts, or extend traditional loans.
This model mirrors long-established trust banks such as Bank of New York Mellon and State Street, which specialize in safekeeping assets rather than retail banking.
See Related: Crypto Giants Coinbase, Circle, BitGo Eyeing U.S. Bank Charters
Pressure Builds On Traditional Banks
The approvals arrive just months after President Donald Trump signed the first federal framework for payment stablecoins, known as the Genius Act, into law in July.
US bank regulators, including the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., are also examining other pathways for fintech and digital-asset firms to plug into core market plumbing. One idea under review at the Fed is to grant so-called “skinny” master accounts that would allow approved nonbanks to access payment rails such as Fedwire without taking deposits like a conventional bank.
Friday’s approvals build on a precedent set in 2021, when Anchorage Digital Bank became the first crypto-native firm to secure a conditional national trust charter from the OCC.
Anchorage’s case showed that the National Bank Act’s charter framework could stretch to cover digital-asset custody, provided the company limited its activities to those of a trust rather than a deposit-taking institution. Several other crypto firms remain in the queue, including Coinbase, Bridge Network, and Crypto.com, whose applications to the OCC are still pending.
