Jack Dorsey's payment company Block has applied to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish Builders Bank & Trust, a non-depository national trust bank, for the custody of Bitcoin, stablecoins, and other digital assets.

The bank will not accept deposits or issue loans, focusing on custody and trust services, executing customer buy and sell orders on a risk-free principal basis, and stablecoin settlements. It plans to be headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with no branches.

The proposed chairman and CEO is Lee Woolley, Block's head of digital asset strategy, who previously worked at Northern Trust and BNY Mellon. The five proposed directors do not reside near the headquarters, and the company has requested a waiver of the requirement for one director to live within 100 miles.

Block has been operating its digital asset business under approximately 50 state-level money transmission and virtual currency licenses for about eight years, with Bitcoin transaction volumes projected at approximately $10.7 billion in 2025. As of the second quarter, Cash App had about 2 million monthly active crypto users. The company states that the federal license is intended to bring existing custody activities under a unified regulatory framework.

Similar applications have become a trend: Coinbase, Paxos, BitGo, Ripple, Circle, and others are also pursuing national trust or conversion paths, with Revolut receiving conditional approval last week. National trust banks can provide custody, settlement, trust, and reserve management, but cannot engage in traditional deposit-taking and lending.

Mechanically, this is a license-driven pathway to centralization: state-level puzzles are replaced by a single federal regulation, making it easier for institutional clients to accept counterparty identities; custody and settlement fees are concentrated among licensed trusts, putting pressure on state-licensed platforms that do not have a federal framework. Funds will not instantly relocate due to the application, but incremental custody is more likely to flow to entities that can answer "who is regulating you."

The application is still pending OCC approval, and the bank cannot open until approved. The existing licensed experience of Square Financial Services is used as supporting narrative, but this entity explicitly excludes deposit-taking and deposit insurance.

Source: Public information