The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted Coinbase conditional approval to form Coinbase National Trust Company. The decision places the firm under federal oversight for custody, staking, and fiduciary services. It marks a major regulatory step for one of the largest crypto custodians in the United States.
Coinbase filed its national trust charter application on October 3, 2025. The OCC spent about six months reviewing the filing. Analysts linked the slightly longer timeline to the size and complexity of Coinbase’s custody business.
The charter does not give Coinbase a commercial banking license. The company will not take retail deposits. It will also not use fractional reserve banking under this structure.
Instead, the charter covers custody, staking, and fiduciary services. It also opens a federal route for future payment products. This scope keeps the trust company focused on the institutional market infrastructure.
Before this approval, Coinbase operated under state-level oversight through the New York Department of Financial Services. Now, the OCC framework can replace this state-by-state structure with one federal regime across all 50 states.
This change matters for large institutions. Pension funds and asset managers increasingly seek federally supervised counterparties. In turn, the trust company gives Coinbase a new regulatory position for those clients.
Greg Tusar, Co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional, described the charter as a move toward federal regulatory uniformity for the custody and market infrastructure business the company has built over several years.
The trust company lies between institutional clients and the federal regulatory system. It is not a bank. It operates as a federally supervised non-insured custodian, with services and limits defined by the charter structure.
Coinbase’s custody scale helps explain the importance of the approval. The company held $376 billion in crypto assets under custody at the end of 2025. This total represented nearly 13% of global crypto market capitalization.
No other US exchange matched the custody footprint in the text provided. As a result, federal oversight carries both regulatory and commercial value for Coinbase. Institutions often prefer a custodian with direct federal supervision.
Coinbase is not the first crypto firm to receive OCC approval. In December 2025, the OCC approved Ripple Labs, BitGo, Circle, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos in one batch. Coinbase now joins the group as the largest exchange in the cohort.
Michele Alt, a partner at Klaros Group, told American Banker that these conditional approvals reflect the OCC’s role in shaping how crypto activities fit within the traditional bank regulatory system. At the same time, Coinbase still must meet pre-opening requirements before it can operate under the charter.
Those requirements include governance, risk controls, and regulatory examinations. No public timeline has been disclosed for final approval. Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, has said the company plans to expand into payment products under federal supervision alongside its custody business.
Also Read: Ethereum News Today: $44M ETH Whale Transfer to Coinbase Prime Raises Questions
Coinbase’s conditional OCC approval creates a federal framework for its custody, staking, and fiduciary services while excluding retail deposits and traditional banking activity. The move strengthens Coinbase’s institutional position and opens a path for future payment products, though the company must still meet OCC pre-opening requirements.