OCC Grants Coinbase Full National Trust Charter as Community Bankers' Lawsuit Over Crypto Charters Continues

Coinbase now holds a full national trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The company announced it Monday, Nov. 9. American Banker reports the OCC signed off on Friday, Nov. 6.

The entity is Coinbase National Trust Company, built from scratch rather than acquired. Coinbase filed the application on Oct. 3, 2025. The OCC granted conditional approval on April 2, 2026.

Coinbase says the gap since then went to building compliance systems, hiring personnel and going through regulatory review.

What the charter does and does not allow

The charter centers on fiduciary custody of digital assets. Coinbase said it will not take retail deposits, make loans or engage in fractional reserve banking.

It is a trust bank, not a full-service bank.

The company keeps its New York state trust charter and its BitLicense, both supervised by the New York Department of Financial Services. The application lays out a three-year plan to move the custody business over. Federal oversight is being layered on top of the state framework, not swapped in overnight.

The scale explains the pace. Coinbase held $245.7 billion in institutional custody assets as of mid-2025. Total assets on its platform hit $376 billion at the end of 2025.

Coinbase's case for the federal framework

Rick Schonberg, Coinbase's head of prime trading and custody, said the approval "allows us to expand our custody capabilities within a consistent federal regulatory framework." He added that "clear and consistent oversight matters."

Vice Chairman Ryan VanGrack said: "We've spent years asking for clear rules and rigorous oversight, and today's approval of our national trust charter puts more of our business behind that commitment."

Coinbase pointed to two practical advantages of a federal charter. One is federal preemption of some state financial laws for OCC-regulated entities. The other is clear rules under the agency's recently finalized framework. That framework includes a final rule published March 2, 2026, and effective April 1, which confirmed in 12 CFR 5.20 that trust banks can conduct non-fiduciary activities such as custody.

Near term, Coinbase says the focus is custody. Later it wants to move into stablecoin issuance and servicing, white-label stablecoin arrangements for other companies, and payments.

A wave of charters under the GENIUS Act

Coinbase is not alone. Ripple received conditional OCC approval on Dec. 12, 2025, and final approval on Oct. 26, 2026. Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin has an estimated market capitalization of $2.5 billion to $2.6 billion.

The GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025, set up a federal framework for payment stablecoin issuers. National trust banks are one of the structures the OCC is using to bring issuers and custodians inside it.

According to American Banker, the OCC has approved or conditionally approved nearly two dozen national trust bank charters during the second Trump administration. More than a dozen went to crypto firms.

The approvals include conditional trust status for World Liberty Financial, which is linked to the Trump family. No source in this reporting alleges the approval was improper, and no investigation has been announced.

The OCC's decision letters attach conditions. They cover tier one capital, which runs from $6 million to $60 million bank by bank, plus 180 days of wind-down expenses held in liquid assets. Banks also need OCC non-objection to their IT architecture and to senior hires such as the chief information security officer and chief technology officer. Most conditions run three years and are enforceable under 12 USC 1818.

The community bankers' challenge

The Independent Community Bankers of America has sued the OCC. The group alleges the regulator exceeded its authority in granting trust charters to crypto firms.

The broader objection, as American Banker describes the legal fight, is that the charters let crypto companies operate like banks without traditional bank regulatory requirements. The ICBA's complaint is about statutory authority, and a court has not ruled on it.

The OCC's own position rests on 12 USC 27(a), which limits a national trust bank to "the operations of a trust company and activities related thereto." The agency's 2026 rule reads that language to include custody.

The approvals also follow years in which federal banking, securities and derivatives regulators resisted letting crypto firms into traditional finance. The current OCC has reversed that posture.

What comes next

Coinbase's custody migration will run on its three-year timeline. Coinbase has not said when it expects to begin stablecoin issuance under the new charter.

The unresolved question is the ICBA suit. If a court agrees the OCC overstepped, the charters Coinbase, Ripple and others just collected could be called into question. No ruling date appears in the filings or statements available.