Crypto Financial Companies Accelerate Applications for OCC National Trust Bank Licenses
Since December 2025, over 12 crypto and fintech companies have applied for or obtained national trust bank licenses from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), including Coinbase, Ripple, Circle, BitGo, Morgan Stanley Digital Assets, and Fidelity Digital Assets.
Payward, the parent company of Kraken, submitted its application on May 9 to establish Payward National Trust Company, aiming to provide federally regulated crypto custody and trust services for institutional and individual clients; currently, only Anchorage Digital Bank is fully operational, while most are in conditional approval stages.
The national trust bank license allows companies to manage assets under a single federal regulatory framework, reducing reliance on external banking partners; the OCC auditor stated that this move benefits consumers, the banking industry, and the economy, but access to the Federal Reserve payment system remains pending a formal framework.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Ripple, Circle, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos received conditional approval from the OCC on December 12, 2025, after previously relying on state-level trust licenses or banking partners for operations. The transition to a federal license marks a structural shift from the gray area to the core banking system.
In terms of capital pathways, traditional banks and crypto-native companies are acting in sync, with Morgan Stanley applying for Morgan Stanley Digital Trust, N.A. to internalize crypto custody, trading, and staking services, reducing intermediary costs and attracting institutional funds through federal regulation; Payward is layering the OCC license on top of its existing Wyoming SPDI and Federal Reserve master account, creating a multi-layered federal compliance moat.
Similar to the 2021-2022 rush for Wyoming SPDI and state trust licenses, this shift towards OCC national trust banks indicates the industry is transitioning from fragmented regulation to a unified federal framework, moving from the late-stage expansion of "compliance patches" to "infrastructure embedding."
Structural judgment: Essentially, this is a reconstruction of the industry chain. Federal licenses will shift crypto custody and stablecoin issuance from reliance on external cooperation with traditional banks to internal control within a single entity, with the mechanism being the OCC actively providing innovative pathways, combined with the GENIUS Act stablecoin framework, driving capital and technology towards federally regulated entities and reducing systemic fragmentation risks.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Regulation is not a shackle, but a leverage for top players to reconstruct their moats.
Fragmented compliance sells time, while federal licenses sell structure.
Whoever first embeds payment and custody infrastructure will lock in the pricing power for the next round of wealth transfer.