Coinbase Wins Full National Trust Charter From the OCC
Coinbase says the OCC has moved its national trust company from conditional to full status, letting it run custody under a federal regulator. The charter excludes deposits and lending, and a three-year migration from its New York license lies ahead.
Coinbase can now run its crypto custody business under a federal banking regulator. The company says the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has moved its Coinbase National Trust Company from conditional to full national trust bank status. Bloomberg, in a report published 9 November, said the license was approved "last week."
Neither the company nor the reporting gives an exact approval date. The outcome is not in doubt: Coinbase said the agency signed off after months of building compliance systems and hiring.
What the charter covers
Coinbase filed its application on October 3, 2025, and received conditional approval on April 2, 2026. The entity is a de novo national trust bank, meaning it was built from scratch rather than acquired. Its main job is fiduciary digital asset custody.
The conditional status already allowed federally regulated custodial and payments services. It did not create a full-service bank that takes deposits and makes loans, and the final charter does not change that. The charter does not cover retail deposits, lending or fractional reserve banking.
Coinbase keeps its New York state trust charter and BitLicense. The application includes a plan to move the custody business over three years, so the company will operate under both state and federal frameworks for a time. That dual oversight adds a layer of complexity.
Custody scale and stablecoin angle
The custody business is large. Coinbase held $245.7 billion in institutional custody assets as of mid-2025, and total platform assets reached $376 billion at year-end 2025.
Citing the application, Bloomberg says the license will help Coinbase grow custody and move deeper into payments. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, also reports the charter could let Coinbase issue its own stablecoins and help other crypto firms issue and manage tokens. Coinbase has not confirmed that.
A crowded field of trust charters
Coinbase is not alone. Ripple also holds a full OCC trust charter; the OCC gave Ripple National Trust Bank final approval on 26 October, after conditional approval in December 2025. That bank will manage RLUSD reserves and offer enterprise custody, without taking deposits or making loans. The OCC has also given conditional trust status to World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's firm.
Other firms are collecting provisional trust charters as the OCC implements the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin law signed in July 2025.
What it means for the market
A growing list of crypto firms now sees federal oversight as worth pursuing for custody and stablecoin infrastructure. Coinbase sits alongside Ripple with full status, and it already lists Ripple's RLUSD across its products.
The limits are real. Without deposit-taking or lending powers, these trust banks remain specialists. For institutional clients, the practical gain is custody under a federal banking regulator rather than a state license alone. Whether Coinbase uses the charter to issue its own stablecoins is the open question, and the company has not said.
