Coinbase has won full approval from the US banking regulator OCC to establish Coinbase National Trust Company. The charter gives its institutional crypto custody a federal framework, after conditional approval came in April.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is the federal regulator for banks in the US, alongside the state-level regulators that today oversee most American crypto custody. A national trust bank charter is a limited banking licence: it permits fiduciary activities — custody, administration and settlement of assets on clients' behalf — but not deposit-taking or ordinary lending. The charter is also not covered by deposit insurance. Its advantage for firms is that it replaces a patchwork of state licences with one uniform federal framework that applies across the US.
Coinbase says in a blog post, signed by Rick Schonberg, that the company received full approval from the OCC last Friday to establish Coinbase National Trust Company (CNTC). The approval follows the conditional approval Coinbase received in April, and gives the company a federal charter for its institutional custody business.
"This is an important next chapter for Coinbase and for the trust services we have built over more than a decade," Schonberg writes. The charter, according to the post, is meant to bring Coinbase's custody services under a uniform federal framework, building on the foundation the company has laid through the New York state regulator NYDFS.
Coinbase filed its application for a trust bank charter with the OCC in October 2025. The regulator granted conditional approval on 2 April 2026, and approved the charter in full on Friday 6 November after further review.
The company's institutional custody has until now been organised through Coinbase Custody Trust Company, regulated under a limited trust charter from New York's financial regulator NYDFS. Coinbase has also held a so-called BitLicense from NYDFS since 2017. The new federal charter sits alongside this state-level structure, moving institutional custody under a single national framework.
Coinbase is not alone in securing a national trust bank licence from the OCC. Stablecoin issuer Circle won full approval for Circle National Trust — formally First National Digital Currency Bank — on 10 July 2026. The charter is meant to bring federal oversight to the fiduciary services around the USDC stablecoin, and according to Circle also opens the door for the company to eventually manage the reserves behind USDC under the same framework. "OCC approval of Circle National Trust marks a defining step in bringing blockchain technology and digital assets into the core of the US financial system," Jeremy Allaire, co-founder, chairman and chief executive of Circle, wrote in a press release.
Ripple won its charter, Ripple National Trust Bank, on 26 October 2026, after conditional approval in December 2025. The licence covers, among other things, management of the segregated reserves behind the RLUSD stablecoin, alongside general fiduciary custody services for digital assets. "We've said for years that crypto and banks work better together. Full approval of Ripple National Trust Bank is what that looks like in practice," chief executive Brad Garlinghouse wrote in a press release.
Sources: Coinbase, Ripple, Circle, Venable
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