On December 9th, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a press release with a very direct message to U.S. banks that it is acceptable to sit in the middle of crypto transactions.
In the unforgettably titled News Release 2025-121, the OCC issued the somehow even worse title Interpretation Letter 1188, confirming that national banks may conduct “risk-free principal” crypto asset transactions as part of their banking operations, acting as buyers to one customer and sellers to another, without holding any meaningful inventory of the tokens themselves.
The day before, Comptroller Jonathan Gould stood in front of a room full of industry players and made a different, but closely related point.
He said he saw no reason to treat digital assets as a separate species when it comes to custody and custody, and dismissed lobbying efforts from the Banking Policy Institute, which called on the institute to block a range of crypto companies from obtaining National Trust Charter status.
BPI's campaign, described in an October statement titled “BPI Urges OCC to Preserve the Integrity of the National Trust Charter,” argues that applicants such as large exchanges, stablecoin issuers, and fintech platforms want to use the trust charter as a backdoor to bank-like activities without shouldering the full burden of deposit insurance and holding company oversight.
Taken together, the interpretation letter and Mr. Gould's comments provide a clear direction for the future of the industry. The OCC is not trying to cut off cryptocurrencies from the banking system, but rather to figure out which parts of their activities fall into well-known categories such as intermediation, custodianship, and fiduciary services, and under what conditions.
U.S. banks now have the tangible peace of mind of being able to match their customers’ crypto transactions on a risk-free principal basis, and crypto companies understand that the door to the National Trust Charter is not closed just because assets move on a blockchain rather than a traditional custodian.
Who actually runs this part of the banking system?
For those outside the United States, the alphabet soup of banking regulators can feel like an elaborate puzzle, so it's worth starting with the basics.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is an independent agency within the U.S. Treasury that licenses, regulates, and supervises national banks, federal savings associations, and federal branches and agents of foreign banks.
The company relies on assessments and fees from the banks it oversees, rather than on annual Congressional appropriations, and is somewhat immune to short-term political battles over funding. Its mission spans safety, fair access to financial services, and compliance with banking laws.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency sits at the apex of this structure. Mr. Gould, who was sworn in this summer, serves not only as chief executive officer of the OCC but also as a member of bodies such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Board of Governors and the Financial Stability Oversight Council, meaning his views extend to broader discussions about financial stability and market plumbing.
But his central authority is very specific: he heads the agency that grants national bank charters.
A bank charter in this context is essentially a business license that allows an institution to operate as a bank or a closely related entity under federal law. At the federal level, the OCC administers these licenses. At the state level, individual regulators issue their own versions.
OCC's Charter Licensing Manual thoroughly details the process from initial application to final approval. Organizers must demonstrate that their proposed bank has sufficient capital, a reliable management team, a business plan that can withstand stress, and risk management that covers everything from basic credit risk to operational and cyber risks.
New digital-only banks are expected to meet similar standards, with increased scrutiny of technology and third-party providers.
Within that world, national trust banks occupy a narrow but important niche. Federal law allows the OCC to establish a national bank whose activities are limited to trust company and related services, typically focused on serving as a trustee, executor, investment manager, or custodian of assets.
These entities typically do not accept deposits in the normal retail sense and are often not FDIC insured. Because of this structure, many National Trust banks do not meet the definition of a “bank'' under the Bank Holding Company Act, allowing their parent companies to avoid the full burden of supervising consolidated holding companies.
This legal design explains why trust charters have become the focus of tug-of-war. For crypto companies that want to hold customer tokens, manage stablecoin reserves, or sit at the center of payment flows without becoming fully commercial banks, the National Trust Charter offers three things at once: federal oversight, national reach, and a possible path to staying outside of holding company rules.
For traditional banks and their trade associations, this appears to be an uneven playing field, especially when new entrants can process large volumes of payments and reserves with narrower licenses.
BPI's letter to the OCC details this very concern, warning that trust charters have historically targeted institutions “primarily engaged in trust and fiduciary activities.” At the same time, some digital asset applicants are seeking to operate broader payments and preparation businesses.
Gould has said publicly that technology should not be the dividing line. He looks back at decades of electronic storage and book-entry securities. He asks why holding crypto debt on a distributed ledger should be treated as alien to banking.
The same logic underlies Interpretive Letter 1188, which argues, based on prior case law and OCC opinions, that risk-free principal trading of crypto assets is functionally equivalent to permitted intermediary activities and is a logical extension of existing crypto custody services.
What this means for crypto custody and trading
The new letter does something very immediate for U.S. financial institutions. It tells national banks that they can stand in the middle of their customers' crypto transactions as long as they structure the transactions as identity-matched transactions and manage risk with the same care they apply to securities.
Banks can purchase digital assets from one customer and immediately sell them to another customer, booking two offsetting positions that leave no net exposure beyond settlement and operational risk.
For tokens that count as securities, this is based on the well-worn basis of Article 24 of the National Banking Act. For other crypto assets, the letter also conducts a four-factor test and concludes that the activity still falls under “banking activities.”
For major banks, which have traditionally kept cryptocurrencies separate, this represents a real opening. This means we can build a cryptocurrency brokerage and routing service for our customers that minimizes balance sheet risk, rather than dabbling with loosely connected affiliates or leaving this field to exchanges entirely.
This also builds on a previous OCC letter that already outlined how banks hold stablecoin reserves and provide basic custody services for cryptocurrencies.
On the charter front, Gould's refusal to give BPI the sweeping answers it wanted could be even more important for the shape of the market in the coming years. The OCC's Formation Manual reminds applicants that even limited-purpose trust banks must meet the same core standards of capital, management, risk management, and community needs as full national banks.
If the agency begins approving digital asset companies that meet these tests, the core of U.S. cryptocurrency custody and settlement could shift to a national trust bank with OCC oversight at its masthead.
For exchanges, this creates a route to offering institutional clients a vertically integrated stack, with trading, fiat payments, and on-chain custody all housed within a federally supervised entity.
For stablecoin issuers, national trust banks can hold reserves on OCC-regulated balance sheets and run payment flows through a Fed-connected correspondent network, even if the issuer itself is outside of the full banking framework.
For prime brokers and asset managers, the phrase “OCC-supervised national trust bank” on a due diligence checklist looks very different from “state-chartered trust company” or “non-U.S. custodian,” especially when U.S. securities rules require “qualified custodians” of digital assets, similar to stocks and bonds.
The other side of the coin is that trust charters are not easy to succeed.
BPI and other commentators have been busy filling detailed objections into OCC documents against specific applicants, arguing that some crypto platforms have weak consumer protection records, inconsistent business models, and opaque ownership structures unsuitable for bank-level oversight.
Under its charter, the OCC has broad discretion to weigh management quality, financial strength and community benefits, and can attach custom capital and liquidity conditions to trust bank approvals. So the real filter for crypto companies lies not just in headline speeches, but in review teams and oversight agreements.
Globally, the direction set in Washington tends to spread outward. Large banks with operations across multiple continents often look to U.S. rules when deciding where and how to build new lines of business, and foreign regulators keep a close eye on the OCC because its decisions shape the world's largest balance sheets.
If U.S. national banks begin offering risk-free principal routing for Bitcoin and Ethereum under clear OCC guidance, it will impact how these services are expected by global customers in London, Frankfurt, and Singapore.
If a small number of crypto companies were to secure a National Trust Charter and operate large-scale custody and stablecoin operations under federal oversight, it would be a very different model from the approach of offshore exchanges and local payment partners that has defined much of the past decade.
The message to the cryptocurrency industry here is not that the US banking system has thrown its doors wide open.
Instead, major national bank regulators are beginning to lock parts of the crypto business into specific regulatory hooks. brokerage-like trading as a risk-free principal, custody as a modern form of safekeeping, and a trust charter as a home for fiduciary and preparatory activities.
In a market where regulatory uncertainty is a key business risk, such gradual line-by-line clarification can be as important as flashy new legislation.
Cryptocurrency companies looking to provide funding to U.S. institutional investors now have a clearer picture of what they need to do. Banks looking to move beyond white-label products can learn where their own regulators intend to draw the line.
How quickly both sides can get through that opening will determine whether OCC Letter 1188 and Mr. Gould's speech mark the beginning of a new era in bank-run cryptocurrency plumbing, or just another brief entry in a long history of regulators testing whether digital assets fit within existing rules.
