Leading crypto trade groups are rallying behind the U.S. banking regulator in a bid to blunt Senator Elizabeth Warren’s claim that national trust charters for firms like Coinbase, Ripple, and Circle are illegal under federal banking law.
Summary
- The Digital Chamber has written to OCC Comptroller Jonathan Gould urging him to stand by national trust bank charters granted to crypto and stablecoin firms.
- Warren argues those approvals violate the National Bank Act and hand “crypto banks” bank‑like powers without bank‑level safeguards, demanding full charter records by June 1.
- Industry groups counter that Congress effectively blessed OCC oversight of stablecoin issuers through the GENIUS Act and that these entities do not take FDIC‑insured deposits, so they are not traditional banks.
According to reporting from Decrypt, the Digital Chamber has sent a letter to Comptroller Jonathan Gould urging the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to “stand firm” on its decision to grant national trust bank charters to crypto-focused firms, including Coinbase National Trust Company, Ripple National Trust Bank and Circle-affiliated entities. The letter comes days after Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, accused the OCC of “illegally” approving at least nine crypto trust charters in a way that she says flouts the National Bank Act and threatens the safety of the U.S. banking system.
In a May 18 letter to Gould, Warren argued that since December 2025 the OCC has approved “at least nine national trust charters for crypto companies that intend to engage in activities that appear to go far beyond the narrow set of activities permitted by law,” naming Ripple, Circle, Paxos, Fidelity Digital Asset Services, BitGo, Crypto.com’s Foris DAX, Stripe’s Bridge, Protego and Coinbase among the beneficiaries. She warned that these firms are “effectively crypto banks that want to evade the fundamental safeguards and obligations that come with being a bank,” and set a June 1 deadline for the OCC to hand over all applications, legal analyses and any communications with President Trump or his family tied to the approvals.
GENIUS Act becomes a legal shield for stablecoin charters
The Digital Chamber’s response leans heavily on the Guiding and Establishing National Innovations for U.S. Stablecoins Act—the GENIUS Act—which President Trump signed into law in July 2025 as the first federal framework for U.S. dollar‑backed payment stablecoins. As summarized in Decrypt’s coverage, the group argues that “Congress has effectively authorized the OCC to extend bank charters to stablecoin businesses through the GENIUS Act,” and that, as a result, national trust charters for entities like Circle and other payment stablecoin issuers are not some unlawful end‑run but a direct implementation of congressional intent.
Under the GENIUS Act, a new category of “permitted payment stablecoin issuer” is created and placed under primary OCC supervision, with the agency empowered to license, regulate and examine both bank and non‑bank stablecoin issuers. The OCC followed up in February 2026 with a proposed rule to implement the GENIUS Act, setting out how national trust charters and other licenses would apply to stablecoin activities and stressing that federal qualified issuers will be “licensed, regulated, examined, and supervised exclusively by the Comptroller.”
Crucially for the industry’s argument, national trust charters do not allow these firms to accept FDIC‑insured deposits or conduct traditional commercial lending. The Digital Chamber points to that limitation in its letter, saying the chartered firms “do not accept FDIC‑insured deposits and therefore are not engaged in traditional banking operations,” framing them instead as custodians and payment stablecoin issuers operating under a bespoke federal regime.
A proxy fight over who gets to be a “bank” in crypto
Warren’s camp insists this is semantics. Her letter argues that the OCC is using limited‑purpose trust charters and GENIUS Act authority to give crypto firms “bank‑level privileges without bank‑level accountability,” including activities such as staking, lending, trading and stablecoin issuance that go beyond what the National Bank Act allows for national trust banks. She warns that this “regulatory shortcut” could create systemic risk if a stablecoin issuer or large crypto custodian were to fail, without the capital, liquidity and resolution tools that apply to full‑service banks.
Industry groups, by contrast, are treating Warren’s attack as an existential threat to the only federal on‑ramp that has actually started to work for large crypto firms. The Digital Chamber’s letter, alongside comments filed by the Blockchain Association on the OCC’s GENIUS rulemaking, frames national trust charters and PPSI licenses as a hard‑won path to supervised status for stablecoin and custody providers that previously faced a patchwork of state money‑transmitter and trust licenses.
What is really at stake here is not just the legality of a handful of charters, but who gets to define the perimeter of the U.S. banking system in the stablecoin era. If Warren succeeds in scaring the OCC into retreat, Coinbase, Ripple, Circle and peers could see their most promising federal charter avenue narrowed or revoked, pushing them back toward state‑level regimes and reinforcing her broader “anti‑crypto army” posture. If the OCC and its allies hold their ground, the GENIUS Act will have done more than bless stablecoins; it will have quietly created a new class of non‑deposit‑taking, OCC‑supervised crypto institutions that look, move and lobby a lot like banks—even if they insist, for now, that they are something different.
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