The five licenses issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) are thoroughly welding the world's largest financial system with the cutting-edge world of digital assets.
Among them, five core crypto institutions, including Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos, have officially obtained or been approved to upgrade to national trust bank licenses.
This signifies that the crypto giants, which dominate the circulation of trillions of dollars in assets, have collectively transitioned from the margins to a 'federal-level banking infrastructure.'
A transformation aimed at seizing the future rights of issuance and settlement of digital cash, referred to as 'banking with a license,' is fully erupting at the intersection of Wall Street and Crypto Valley.
A strategic elevation of a license
For crypto companies, the value of this National Trust Bank Charter far exceeds any previous state-level permits. It signifies:
Federal direct management, unified rules: directly supervised by the OCC, escaping the fragmented regulatory dilemma of the 'different tunes' played by 50 states in the U.S.
Accessing the 'heart': direct connection to the Federal Reserve's clearing network (such as Fedwire), providing low-cost, real-time efficient fund settlement capabilities.
Equivalence of rights and responsibilities: legally able to conduct core businesses such as digital asset custody and trust, managing a full range of assets for clients from cryptocurrencies to traditional stocks.
OCC Acting Director Jonathan Gould stated in the announcement that new entrants 'benefit the dynamics, competition, and diversity of the banking system.'
This clearly conveys the shift in U.S. regulation: from past scrutiny and containment of crypto innovation to a proactive inclusion within a new framework of 'system manageability' that is regulatory and collaborative.
Why now?
The key loosening of U.S. financial regulation reflects a trio of policy, market, and endogenous dynamics—
First, from the breakthrough of the spot Bitcoin ETF in 2024 to the 'innovation-friendly' policy tone of the Trump administration in 2025, the shift in regulatory winds is a direct driving force.
The OCC has already clarified in its guidance last November that banks can incorporate crypto assets and blockchain into their core businesses, clearing the last ideological barriers for this batch of licensing.
Secondly, the issuance, custody, and clearing of trillion-dollar market cap stablecoins have long operated outside the traditional banking system, posing systemic risks of 'custody black boxes' and 'run panic.' For institutional funds, bank-level trust and transparency are prerequisites for entry.
In the fierce market competition, whoever can provide a stable, low-cost fiat-crypto channel will hold the lifeblood of traffic. A banking license not only means the ability to absorb deposits and secure stable funding but also serves as a system-level moat against market volatility.
As Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla stated, this has brought them into a 'new phase of federal regulation.'
The 'bankification' roadmap of the five giants
The five companies approved this time have strategically positioned themselves at critical nodes of the digital asset ecosystem, with their strategic intentions clearly visible—
Circle: Through First National Digital Currency Bank, elevating the compliance model of USDC to a bank-level, aiming to make stablecoins the digital dollar settlement layer in the Federal Reserve payment system.
Ripple: Establishing Ripple National Trust Bank, aiming to leverage its expertise in cross-border payments to thoroughly resolve XRP's long-term compliance challenges in global clearing and settlement.
Paxos & BitGo: Upgrading from state-level licenses to national licenses, respectively enhancing their 'federal-level' credibility and business scope in stablecoin issuance and institutional asset custody.
Fidelity Digital Assets: As a representative of traditional asset management giants, its transformation signifies that even Wall Street's old money believes it must manage trillion-level traditional capital exposure to crypto assets safely and compliantly with a banking identity.
These five institutions are collaboratively drawing a comprehensive bankification ecological blueprint covering 'issuance-custody-payment-asset management.'
The core driving force behind this wave of 'bankification' originates from the stablecoin market, which has ballooned to a massive size of $300 billion. However, such a large volume of digital cash still circulates largely outside the traditional banking system for settlement.
The essence of a banking license is to open up a compliant, direct 'official pipeline' to the Federal Reserve. Once the connection is completed, the settlement speed of stablecoins will shrink from the traditional T+1 or even longer to nearly real-time, with costs reduced to extremely low levels. This will greatly consolidate the position of compliant stablecoins like USDC and may reshape the flow paths of global capital.
In the future, possessing a bank-level license as a compliance foundation will become the cornerstone supporting stablecoins, RWA (real-world assets), and complex DeFi applications. The trillion-dollar downstream market will unfold from here.
This step by the OCC not only issues a 'legal passport' for the crypto industry but may also be positioning for the U.S. dollar system to maintain its global settlement hegemony in the digital age, laying the groundwork for critical digital infrastructure. As crypto giants don 'banking attire,' a covert war over future financial sovereignty has quietly escalated.
