Crypto bank charters: Warren challenges OCC's approvals

Senator Elizabeth Warren accused the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Tuesday of letting crypto firms obtain bank-like status without bank-like obligations, widening a fight over how far US authorities should go in bringing digital-asset companies inside the banking system.

At issue are at least nine national trust charters that Warren says the OCC has approved since December 2025. In a letter to Comptroller Jonathan Gould, the Senate Banking Committee’s ranking Democrat argued the approvals let crypto groups move closer to the banking perimeter while sidestepping the safeguards that apply to traditional banks. CoinDesk first reported the letter and the firms it targets.

The challenge pushes the broader shift in US crypto policy into bank-supervision territory. Congress and market regulators have spent much of the past year arguing over trading rules, stablecoins and market structure. Warren is pressing a different point: whether a bank regulator is widening charter access for digital-asset firms before it has shown that the same prudential standards still apply.

If the OCC keeps opening trust charters to digital-asset companies, it could set a precedent for how custody, payments and other crypto services sit inside the federal banking framework — and how much prudential scrutiny those businesses face before they enter it.

The firms named in the letter include Coinbase, Paxos, Ripple, BitGo and Fidelity Digital Asset Services, according to the Senate Banking Committee’s release. Warren treats the approvals as a pattern, not isolated calls. She gave the OCC until 1 June 2026 to explain the legal basis for the decisions, the supervisory standards applied to applicants and the agency’s view of which banking rules attach to trust-chartered entities once they are operating.

“These companies are effectively crypto banks that want to evade the fundamental safeguards and obligations that come with being a bank.”

— Elizabeth Warren, letter to the OCC released by the Senate Banking Committee

Why the charters matter

A national trust charter does not make a crypto company a full-service lender. But it can give the firm a federal banking wrapper for custody and transaction services without automatically pulling it into the full rulebook that governs deposit-taking banks. Warren wants the OCC to say where that line sits.

Her letter also puts attention on a corner of crypto policy that often sits behind the bigger fights over securities law and market structure. The question is whether a digital-asset firm can obtain a national charter from a bank regulator, then use that approval to expand trust with customers, counterparties and state authorities while carrying a lighter set of obligations than a conventional bank.

This is plumbing, not token-market rules. Charters, supervision and access to banking rails are the issues Warren is trying to force into the open.

Reuters reported in February that Crypto.com had received conditional US approval for a national trust bank charter, one of the clearest recent examples of the route Warren is challenging. The report showed how the charter question has moved from a legal abstraction to a live operating issue for crypto companies that want deeper access to US financial infrastructure.

“Since December 2025, you have approved at least nine national trust charters for crypto companies.”

— Elizabeth Warren, letter to the OCC

What Warren wants from the OCC

Warren asked Gould to spell out how the OCC assessed each applicant, whether the firms met the standards that would ordinarily apply to a bank seeking federal approval, and how the agency plans to supervise companies performing bank-adjacent functions without taking on the full burden of bank regulation.

For the industry, the stakes are practical. A crypto company that can point to an OCC charter has a stronger answer when customers, business partners and lawmakers ask whether it sits inside a recognised federal framework. For Warren, that same answer is the problem — charter access without equivalent capital, compliance and oversight requirements.

The OCC now faces a straightforward question: whether these trust charters are tightly bounded approvals for specialised firms, or the start of a broader pathway that lets crypto businesses approach the banking core without first becoming banks in the conventional sense. Warren’s 1 June deadline means the next phase of that argument will move quickly.