The Coinbase national trust charter is officially real. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted final approval for Coinbase National Trust Company (CNTC) on November 6, 2026, and authorized the bank to open on November 9 – handing the largest US crypto exchange something no crypto-native firm has taken for granted: a federal trust bank charter with the OCC as its primary regulator.
The approval caps a journey that began with the charter application in October 2025 and a conditional green light in April 2026. The final decision, published under OCC control number 2025-Charter-343449, consummates the charter and sets Coinbase up to take custody of digital assets under a single federal oversight regime rather than a patchwork of state licenses.
What the Coinbase national trust charter actually changes
Under the new structure, Coinbase Custody Trust Company client accounts and assets will be assigned to CNTC under an agreement signed on September 1, which the OCC approved via a Regulation W exemption. In practice, institutional clients get federal-oversight custody – and Coinbase gets a cleaner springboard for expansion into institutional custody, payments and stablecoin services, arriving just as the GENIUS Act era makes federally chartered trust issuers a familiar species.
Three years of guardrails
The OCC is not handing over the keys without conditions. For its first three years, CNTC must:
- Maintain at least $60 million in tier 1 capital;
- Hold prescribed liquid-asset buffers plus a reserve covering 180 days of operating expenses;
- Give the OCC 60 days’ prior notice and obtain written non-objection before significant deviations from its business plan, including material product or service changes and transactional services for custody customers.
Trust charters are becoming the default banking route for crypto
Coinbase is hardly alone on this road. Ripple received a full national trust charter the prior month, and Circle secured its own OCC approval for a national trust bank earlier in the cycle. The pattern is hard to miss: while the banking world debates crypto on the way in, the OCC has been quietly handing out charters on the way up.
The timing is not subtle either. With the CLARITY framework fight still smoldering in Congress and stablecoin regulation settling into place, a federal trust charter converts Coinbase’s custody business from a regulated contender into regulated infrastructure. For an industry that spent a decade arguing it deserved a seat at the table, the OCC has essentially replied: here is the table, and here is your charter.
