The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has given conditional approval to Coinbase’s application for a national bank trust charter after about six months of review.
Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal said the conditional approval in an X post, noting the decision follows December OCC approvals for other crypto firms including Ripple Labs, BitGo, Circle, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos. Coinbase had previously said it had “no intention of becoming a bank” if granted a charter.
Greg Tusar, Coinbase’s vice president of institutional product, stressed that the company will not become a commercial bank, will not take retail deposits, and will not engage in fractional reserve banking. He described the charter as a way to bring federal regulatory uniformity to Coinbase’s custody and market infrastructure services. Coinbase will continue operating under New York’s Department of Financial Services, where it holds a BitLicense and a state limited-purpose trust charter.
The OCC action arrives amid broader regulatory and policy debates, including disputes over stablecoin yield provisions that have delayed a digital asset market structure bill in Congress. CEO Brian Armstrong said in January the exchange could not support the legislation as written; Senate Banking Committee lawmakers later postponed a required markup.
As of publication, the OCC’s public application tracker still listed Coinbase’s filing as “received.” Cointelegraph contacted Coinbase for comment but had not received a response.
Separately, Coinbase is facing legal pushback over its US prediction markets, launched in January through a partnership with Kalshi. The company filed preemptive lawsuits against gaming authorities in Connecticut, Illinois and Michigan, arguing that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) — not state regulators — has authority over prediction markets. Those cases were ongoing at the time of reporting.