Coinbase Joins Circle, Ripple With Final OCC Approval for Federal Trust Bank Charter

Coinbase has received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to charter Coinbase National Trust Company, the crypto exchange said on Monday.

The OCC approved the application last Friday, according to Coinbase. The firm said the charter will let it expand its custody business, which holds digital assets on behalf of institutional clients, under a federal regulatory framework.

"Custody is foundational to our business," the company said, describing itself as the leading crypto custodian globally. The charter will "bring clear and consistent federal uniformity" to its custody operations, it added.

"Trusted custody is essential for bringing more of the financial system onchain," Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted on Monday, calling the trust company "another step for building that foundation."

Coinbase has offered regulated custody since 2018, when its Coinbase Custody Trust Company won a limited purpose trust charter from the New York Department of Financial Services. The new national trust company builds on that foundation while bringing its trust activities into a consistent federal framework, Coinbase said.

The approval comes seven months after the OCC gave Coinbase conditional approval in April, when the company said it was not becoming a commercial bank and would not take retail deposits or engage in fractional reserve banking. Coinbase first applied for the charter last year.

The crypto charter wave

Coinbase joins a growing list of crypto firms with national trust charters. Circle won final approval in July for a trust bank to manage the reserves behind its USDC stablecoin, and Ripple received final approval last month for a trust bank behind its RLUSD stablecoin.

Others are still awaiting final approval. Jack Dorsey's Block has applied for a charter to custody Bitcoin in September, Kraken parent Payward filed its own application in May, and a trust company linked to Trump family-backed World Liberty Financial won conditional approval in August for a charter tied to its USD1 stablecoin, Reuters reported.