Bridge’s OCC Approval Opens Path to Federal Stablecoin Trust Bank
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Coinbase received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Monday for a national trust company, after a Friday sign-off. The new charter moves its custody business into a federal banking framework and follows an earlier conditional approval in April.
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What it means
Trust charters for crypto custody have mostly come from state regulators such as New York's Department of Financial Services, with Anchorage Digital standing since 2021 as the only crypto firm holding a full OCC national trust bank charter. Coinbase itself operated under a New York trust charter before this approval. The OCC's move folds Coinbase's custody arm into the same federal framework that governs traditional bank trust companies, ending its reliance on a single state regulator.
Institutional clients who custody assets with Coinbase now deal with one federal supervisor instead of a patchwork of state trust regulators, simplifying compliance for funds and corporates holding crypto on its platform. Rivals without a federal charter face pressure to pursue the same status or risk looking less credible to institutional allocators. Smaller state-chartered trust companies may see business migrate toward Coinbase's federally backed custody arm as counterparties favor uniform national oversight.
A bank charter is not a blanket crypto license: the OCC's own order for Bridge spells out that chartering a trust bank does not substitute for the separate stablecoin issuer approval required under the GENIUS Act. That distinction matters because it tempers the idea that federal recognition settles every regulatory question for custody or issuance businesses. Firms seeking both custody and stablecoin issuance will still need to clear two separate federal tracks, not one.
Bridge's charter carries a concrete test: the OCC requires $45 million in minimum capital and preopening checks before it can operate as a federal stablecoin trust bank, a threshold that will determine whether it actually launches under this structure. Watch whether Bridge meets that capital bar and clears preopening review, and whether other exchanges beyond Coinbase file for national trust charters in response to this precedent.
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