On April 2, Coinbase (COIN) announced that it has received conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to operate as a national trust bank. Paul Grewal, the company’s Chief Legal Officer, stated that if final approval is granted, the cryptocurrency exchange will be able to conduct custody business under federal regulation and operate payment products. In the long term, Coinbase will work with the OCC to explore infrastructure products in the payments space, promoting the expansion of cryptocurrency payments across multiple directions. To be clear, Coinbase will not become a commercial bank, will not accept retail deposits, and will not engage in fractional reserve banking.
Although a trust charter does not permit traditional retail deposits or fractional reserve lending, it grants Coinbase the legal status to efficiently move, hold, and settle funds nationwide, removing legal obstacles for its entry into institutional payment and settlement services. The approval is an initial agreement, and specific conditions must be met before Coinbase can operate as a trust bank. Grewal noted that the OCC’s conditional approval represents an important recognition of the development of crypto infrastructure. At the same time, Coinbase is deeply involved in Washington’s legislative maneuvering over the CLARITY Act, which aims to define the basic framework of the crypto market. The core of current negotiations focuses on the compliance definition of stablecoin yields, as traditional banks attempt to impose restrictions on the stablecoin rewards offered by exchanges.
Last year, Coinbase launched the Coinbase Payments product for platforms and merchants, integrating wallet functionality and supporting stablecoin settlements, and also partnered with Shopify to launch a payment protocol based on its own blockchain, Base. Through partnerships with Shopify and Stripe, its merchant partners can accept USDC stablecoin payments. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated that the company has a “challenging goal” to make USDC the number one stablecoin globally, a position currently held by Tether’s USDT. He also stated that the goal is to turn Coinbase into the “number one financial services application globally” in the coming years. As early as June 2025, Coinbase had already obtained a license under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation from Luxembourg, becoming the first U.S. exchange with unified operating rights across all 27 EU countries. As companies such as Circle (CRCL) and Ripple (XRP) have also received similar OCC licenses, a compliant stablecoin market backed by federal regulation is rapidly taking shape.
