Coinbase has received a full national trust bank charter from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), allowing its institutional crypto custody business to come under direct federal supervision. OCC records show that Coinbase National Trust Company completed the chartering process on November 6; the company announced the approval on November 9. Coinbase applied in October 2025 and received conditional approval on April 2, 2026. The newly established national trust bank was built from scratch and is focused on fiduciary digital-asset custody and certain services connected to transferring assets held in custody.
The charter does not make Coinbase a conventional commercial bank: the institution cannot accept ordinary retail deposits, offer traditional loans or directly issue stablecoins. Coinbase plans to move its custody operations from its New York-regulated entity to the federal trust bank over three years. It will retain its existing New York trust charter and BitLicense, leaving state and federal frameworks in place during the transition. The charter requires at least $60 million in Tier 1 capital, as well as liquid assets sufficient to cover 180 days of operating expenses during the bank’s first three years. The bank may facilitate customer access to staking, prime trading and financing, but Coinbase affiliates—not the bank itself—will provide those services.
The scale of Coinbase’s institutional custody business helps explain the gradual transition: it held $245.7 billion in institutional custody assets in mid-2025, while assets across its platform totaled $376 billion at the end of 2025. Federal supervision could reinforce Coinbase’s position in the market. Ripple received a comparable final charter on October 26, while the OCC has also advanced applications involving Circle, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, established a framework for regulating payment stablecoins, but Coinbase’s approved business plan does not include stablecoin issuance. The charter has also drawn opposition: the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC in October, challenging its approach to limited-purpose trust charters. Coinbase’s approval does not automatically grant access to Federal Reserve payment systems; that requires a separate review.