Coinbase has received final approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to set up Coinbase National Trust Company. The exchange announced it on Monday, November 9, while the charter itself took effect on Friday. The company's institutional custody business will now run under a single federal regulator.
What the OCC decided
According to Coinbase, the regulator approved the application last Friday. The company filed in October 2025 and got conditional approval in April 2026. Seven months passed between the first decision and the final one.
Under the OCC's preliminary approval letter, cited by Cointelegraph, the new status lets Coinbase National Trust Company hold clients' digital assets as a fiduciary. In April the company stressed that it is not becoming a commercial bank, will not take retail deposits and will not run fractional reserve banking. It offers no ordinary banking services to the public.
Coinbase has offered custody since 2018, when Coinbase Custody Trust Company won a limited purpose trust charter from the New York Department of Financial Services. The new entity builds on that base but moves the trust activity under a federal regulator. Neither Coinbase nor the OCC has given launch dates for new products.
What the company plans to build
In its application Coinbase described segregated custody accounts for institutional clients. Through other entities in the group they would get access to staking, financing and trading. The company also wants to explore digital asset payment products and custody that lets clients interact with selected smart contracts.
In its statement Coinbase called custody the foundation of its business and promised "clear and consistent federal uniformity" for these operations. It describes itself as the leading crypto custodian globally.
"Trusted custody is essential for bringing more of the financial system onchain."
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, from a post on X dated November 9, 2026
Who else holds a charter and who is still waiting
Coinbase is not the first crypto company to win a national trust charter this year. Circle got final approval in July for a trust bank that manages the reserves behind USDC, and Ripple did so last month for a bank built around its RLUSD stablecoin. Cointelegraph adds BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos to the list.
The rest of the applications are still in the queue.
- Crypto.com and Stripe-owned Bridge have conditional approval.
- A trust company linked to World Liberty Financial received conditional approval in August for a charter tied to its USD1 stablecoin, Reuters reported.
- Jack Dorsey's Block applied in September to custody Bitcoin.
- Payward, the owner of Kraken, filed in May, and EDX Markets is still pursuing its charter.
Banking lobby pushback and what comes next
Not everyone likes the approvals. Sen. Elizabeth Warren argues that the OCC's crypto charters, Coinbase's included, are illegal. The Independent Community Bankers of America, a trade group for community banks, has sued the OCC to stop crypto firms from entering banking. The group says they sidestep the usual banking requirements.
Coinbase, one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, now sits alongside Circle and Ripple. Block, Payward and others wait for final decisions, and the bankers' group is challenging such approvals in court. The market did not celebrate the day: according to Decrypt, Bitcoin traded near $74,460 (down 1.8%) while Ether lost 5.5%.
Comments
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *