Coinbase Secures Final OCC Trust Charter Approval, Third This Year

Custody Moves to Federal Oversight

Coinbase Global has received final approval to open its national trust company, the company announced on Monday, November 9, completing a charter process that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) began with conditional approval in April. The regulator issued its final approval on Friday, November 6, three days before the announcement, clearing the last gate before the trust company can start business. The charter moves the exchange's custody operations into a federal regulatory framework. Since 2018, Coinbase has provided custody through Coinbase Custody Trust Company, a limited-purpose trust chartered by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). The April conditional approval first opened the path to operate custody under federal rather than state oversight. Under the transition plan described by the OCC, the company will move its entire custody service to the new national trust company over three years. A national trust charter is narrower than a full banking license: the holder cannot take retail deposits or extend loans the way a commercial bank does. Custody, the safekeeping of client assets, sits at the core of the exchange's institutional offering. Coinbase said the approval lets custody run inside a consistent federal system with clearer requirements, and the license supports expansion in custody and payments, including the potential to issue its own stablecoin and to handle issuance and management services for other digital asset firms. The company is the third digital asset business this year to win final OCC approval for a new national trust bank, after Circle in July and Ripple in October. The decision reflects a broader effort by blockchain companies to anchor regulated services inside the U.S. financial system. It also lands amid a standing question over whether trust structures let some firms deliver bank-like services while avoiding the obligations traditional banks carry.

Senate Democrats Escalate Records Demands

Congressional scrutiny is building in parallel. Senator Elizabeth Warren has been the sharpest critic of how the OCC charts digital asset firms. In a May letter to the agency, she questioned at least nine approvals, Coinbase's conditional approval included, and asked for every application, the legal analysis behind each decision, and copies of communications between OCC officials and the White House or the Trump family. She has argued that some firms may be reaching beyond the limits of a traditional national trust company, and that letting them run bank-like operations without matching safeguards would put consumers and the wider financial system at risk. On Thursday, November 5, Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) set to take its chairmanship, sent letters to Binance, Tether, World Liberty Financial (WLFI) and Fight LLC, the issuer of the TRUMP memecoin. In a statement, his office said the targets must voluntarily produce the requested records by January 4, 2027, or the subcommittee will pursue other means to secure cooperation. The Binance and Tether probes cover illicit crypto use and dealings between the administration and crypto firms, while the WLFI and Fight files concern potential conflicts of interest in the Trump family's crypto ventures. Blumenthal also asked executives at Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Paxos and Gemini for details on donations to the White House ballroom construction project, and told WLFI and Fight to begin producing documents by the end of this month. Separately, a draft oversight plan prepared by an outside progressive group led by a former Warren aide lists Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong as a proposed hearing witness; it has circulated in Washington and been reviewed by Democratic staff, but it is not an official congressional program. None of the investigations has reached a conclusion.

Scope Is the Open Question

The two threads meet at the same point: process and scope. The charter gives Coinbase's custody business a single federal framework, but the records demands test whether this year's approvals followed proper procedure and whether holders stay inside the limits of their charters. Blumenthal's January 4, 2027 deadline is the near-term marker; if the four targets refuse voluntary production, the subcommittee can escalate, and an incoming chairman with subpoena power makes that threat concrete. The Warren letter points somewhere more direct: any escalation could reach the OCC's own files, including the legal reasoning behind Coinbase's approval. Firms watching from the outside now have to price two outcomes at once, wider federal access and harder political review of how that access was granted.