Regulation
Coinbase Wins Final OCC Approval for National Trust Bank
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Coinbase announced on November 9, 2026 that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency had granted final approval to charter Coinbase National Trust Company. The OCC acted on November 6, 2026, approving a noninsured national trust bank with a requirement to maintain at least $60 million in tier 1 capital.
The final decision follows Coinbase’s October 3, 2025 application and preliminary conditional approval on April 2, 2026, which left final authorization dependent on completion of preopening requirements. The New York-based institution is a wholly owned subsidiary of Coinbase Global (COIN ) and is designed to provide digital-asset custody in a fiduciary capacity primarily for institutional clients.
The federal charter does not end Coinbase Inc.’s state oversight. It will remain under New York Department of Financial Services supervision, following its 2017 BitLicense and Coinbase Custody Trust Company’s 2018 New York limited-purpose trust charter. Coinbase said at the conditional-approval stage that it would not become a commercial bank, take retail deposits or engage in fractional-reserve banking.
Custody Business Will Migrate Over Three Years
The custody operation is already substantial. Coinbase’s application reported $245.7 billion in assets under custody as of June 30, 2025, a historical measure of the business proposed for the charter rather than a current balance following approval. The entire custody business is to migrate from Coinbase Custody Trust Company to the national trust bank over the three-year de novo period.
Two core products illustrate what will move. Prime Vault provides segregated digital-asset storage using multi-party computation and unique onchain wallet addresses for each customer. Prime Custody holds customer fiat and digital assets in omnibus storage, allowing clients to trade while assets remain within the custody environment throughout the trade lifecycle.
Approved Activities Exclude Stablecoin Issuance
The OCC’s April decision permits custody customers to accept, hold and transfer custodied fiat currency and digital assets through their custodial accounts. Those transactional services are limited to custody customers and custodied assets, with custodied fiat held in for-benefit-of accounts at third-party banks.
The trust may also act as a finder connecting custody clients with staking, Prime Trading and Prime Financing offered by Coinbase affiliates. It will not provide those underlying services itself, keeping the bank’s approved role centered on custody and related access rather than operating each affiliate product.
That approved plan does not include issuing stablecoins. Responding to a public comment about potential stablecoin issuance, the OCC said the bank had not proposed such activity and concluded that the arguments were irrelevant to the application. The final announcement likewise framed the approval as an expansion of custody under federal oversight.
Capital And Business-Plan Conditions
During its first three years of operation, the bank must hold the greater of 50% of tier 1 capital or $30 million in eligible liquid assets. A separate eligible-liquid-asset reserve must cover 180 days of operating expenses, without double-counting assets used to meet the other liquidity requirement. The bank must assess the adequacy of its capital and liquidity quarterly and hold higher amounts when needed for its risk profile, business strategies and growth prospects.
Significant changes to the approved business plan or operations require at least 60 days’ prior written notice to the OCC’s Novel Bank Supervisory Office and a written determination of no objection. That requirement covers material changes to risk and operating limits, including limits intended to keep the balance sheet highly liquid. It runs through the organization period and the same initial operating period.
The charter establishes a federal destination for Coinbase’s custody business without broadening the approved plan into commercial banking or stablecoin issuance. The central operational task is the migration, with capital, liquidity and business-plan conditions shaping how Coinbase builds that federally supervised custody platform.
