Jack Dorsey's Block Files for Federal Charter to Custody Bitcoin and Stablecoins

Block, the payments company Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey founded, wants Washington's permission to hold your bitcoin under a federal roof instead of a patchwork of state licenses.

The company said Tuesday it filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish Builders Bank & Trust, N.A., a national trust bank. If approved, it would provide custody and fiduciary services for digital assets including bitcoin and stablecoins, according to Block's own statement, reported by Crypto Briefing and Crypto.news.

This isn't a bank in the way most people think of one. Builders Bank would be uninsured and would not take deposits or make loans. It's a custody-only operation, built to hold assets securely and manage them on clients' behalf, not to compete with Chase or Wells Fargo for checking accounts.

Who runs it, and why now

Lee Woolley, Block's current Digital Asset Strategy Lead, is slated to serve as Builders Bank's president and CEO if regulators sign off. Woolley previously ran Treasury Department Federal Credit Union and held senior roles at Northern Trust and BNY Mellon, more than 20 years in banking, according to Crypto.news.

"Building on Block's experience in the digital asset space, our history with Square Financial Services, and the deep banking expertise of the team we've assembled, we believe Builders Bank is well positioned to support Block's broader vision of economic empowerment," Woolley said in the company's statement.

Block already operates Square Financial Services, an industrial bank running since 2021. Builders Bank would be a separate, narrower entity focused strictly on custody and trust activities, giving Block one federal supervisor instead of a state-by-state compliance headache as its digital asset business scales.

Block is late to a crowded party

This filing didn't happen in a vacuum. Cryptopolitan reports the OCC has received 40 de novo charter applications since 2025, approved 21, and denied two. Comptroller Jonathan Gould says 23 of those applications, or 57.5%, involve some form of digital asset activity, an eightfold increase over four years.

The list of companies ahead of Block in this race is long. Circle received final approval on July 10 to run Circle National Trust bank. Coinbase got preliminary conditional approval on April 2. BitGo, Paxos, Fidelity Digital Assets and Ripple have all secured conditional approvals for similar charters, per Cryptopolitan. Revolut landed conditional approval on September 2, though as a full-service insured national bank rather than a trust-only charter, a distinction Cryptopolitan is careful to note.

Traders Union adds one more name to the list that deserves scrutiny: World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture backed by President Trump's family, which also received conditional OCC approval. Traders Union describes this as happening "amid scrutiny in Washington over possible conflicts of interest," though no investigation, charge, or formal finding has been reported in these sources. That's a fair thing to flag given who's involved, and it deserves the same regulatory transparency as every other applicant on this list, no more and no less.

What the market did with the news

Bitcoin's reaction was close to nothing. According to Investing Live, the coin eased from session highs near $78,900 to lows around $78,000 on September 8, a shallow move that doesn't read as a market verdict either way. Traders have simply gotten used to a steady drip of OCC filings from crypto-adjacent firms over the past year, and a charter application signals intent, not approval.

Block's stock has had a better year regardless of this filing. TipRanks reports XYZ shares are up 23% year-to-date, and the platform's tracked analysts hold a Strong Buy consensus, 26 buys against three holds, with an average price target of $99.59, implying 24.3% upside from current levels.

The part that isn't decided yet

Filing an application is not the same as getting one approved. The OCC still has to review Builders Bank against its pre-opening conditions, a process that has taken other applicants months. Two of the 40 de novo applications since 2025 have already been denied, so accommodating doesn't mean automatic.

How long the OCC takes to move Block's application relative to the Circle, Ripple, BitGo and Revolut filings that got there first is an open question, as is whether the agency treats Trump-family-linked World Liberty Financial's approval process any differently than everyone else's. Neither the OCC nor Block has given a target date for a decision.