The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) granted conditional national trust bank charters to Circle, Ripple, Paxos, BitGo and Fidelity Digital Assets, effective December 12, 2025, marking a federal integration of digital-asset services.
The charters rely on a legal framework dating to Interpretive Letter 1176 (January 2021) and subsequent OCC guidance issued under Comptroller Jonathan Gould (letters 1183, 1186 and 1188), which clarify that a national trust bank may operate with powers comparable to state trust companies. A trust bank is a federally chartered institution focused on fiduciary and custodial services rather than traditional deposit-taking. The new entities will concentrate on fiduciary, custodial and related services and will not operate as deposit-taking, FDIC-insured retail banks.
Circle intends to use its national trust charter to centralize USDC reserves within the federal system and enable bank-supervised stablecoin accounts and on-chain settlement for corporate clients. Ripple’s trust bank will offer regulated custody and settlement for institutional flows associated with its cross-border payments technology but will not issue its RLUSD stablecoin directly through the bank.
Paxos, BitGo and Fidelity Digital Assets will transition existing state trust operations to federal supervision, gaining national scope for stablecoin and tokenized-securities platforms. Charles Cascarilla, CEO of Paxos, said the supervision will “enable customers to innovate, incubate and grow digital asset businesses safely and seamlessly within the US.” OCC Comptroller Jonathan Gould noted that “new entrants into the federal banking sector are good for consumers, the banking industry and the economy.”
OCC clears Circle, Ripple and others to launch crypto national banks: what the charters allow
Each approval is conditional and triggers an 18-month pre-opening phase requiring firms to raise capital, hire specialized staff, build compliant infrastructure, and implement robust internal controls and cybersecurity. Failure to meet those requirements will lead to revocation of the charter; firms therefore face a hard deadline of June 12, 2027, to satisfy OCC conditions. Revocation would force affected companies back into a patchwork of state rules or abandon federal ambitions, damaging credibility for stablecoin issuers that depend on trust and regulatory clarity.
The federal charters are likely to reduce compliance complexity for firms that previously navigated multiple state regimes, lower counterparty risk for institutional counterparties, and potentially enable direct Federal Reserve access for reserve management—steps that can increase market confidence in regulated stablecoins and tokenized assets. The move also intensifies competition for traditional banks and drew pushback from trade groups concerned about regulatory arbitrage. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse criticized the opposition, calling it the work of “anti-innovation bank lobbyists.”
Implications for traders and treasuries include clearer custody and settlement rails for stablecoins and tokenized assets, which may lower operational risk but increase scrutiny on custody controls and liquidity management. For institutions weighing integration, the charters offer a supervised route but one that requires operational readiness to meet federal prudential standards.
The OCC approvals mark a structural shift that places several leading crypto firms inside the federal banking perimeter while keeping strict conditional safeguards.
