On Oct. 2, the Independent Community Bankers of America filed a federal lawsuit against the OCC in Washington, exactly two weeks after the regulator greenlit Agora National Trust Bank, Catena Trust Bank, and Bastion Platforms.
As American Banker reported, the legal challenge requests that the court invalidate both the OCC’s national trust bank regulation and Interpretive Letter 1176. The lawsuit contends that the agency overstepped its bounds by expanding narrow trust charters to accommodate fintech and cryptocurrency companies.
According to the ICBA, the OCC has granted full or conditional approval to 21 trust banks, with 13 of those entities connected to the crypto sector.
Banks lost the applicant-by-applicant fight against crypto firms
Banking associations fought digital-asset applications on a case-by-case basis, but the OCC consistently moved forward with approvals. In December 2025, five crypto-associated national trust applications secured favorable decisions, including BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, First National Digital Currency Bank, Paxos, and applicants linked to Ripple.
Additional approvals followed for Bridge, National Digital Trust, and Foris DAX (the parent company of Crypto.com) in February, followed by Coinbase in April and Laser Digital in May. Agora, Catena, and Bastion joined the list on Sept. 18, though several of these decisions remain preliminary or conditional.
The OCC formally adopted its national trust bank regulation in February, with an effective date of April 1. The update substituted the phrase “fiduciary activities” with the broader statutory language of “the operations of a trust company and activities related thereto.”
The agency maintains that this phrasing preserves its existing chartering powers and notes that national trust banks have historically engaged in certain nonfiduciary functions, such as custody. The OCC cites 12 U.S.C. 24(Seventh) as the legal basis for nonfiduciary custody and related operations.
Conversely, the ICBA complaint interprets the same rule as an improper stretching of a limited-purpose trust charter to encompass non-depository, non-fiduciary crypto enterprises under regulatory standards less stringent than those applied to insured institutions.
Challenging a specific firm like Coinbase or Ripple asks the regulator to reject a single applicant, whereas a lawsuit targeting the underlying rule asks a federal judge to determine the boundaries of authority supporting every charter dependent upon it.
The OCC said a court would decide
When issuing the February rule, the OCC referenced the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright ruling, noting that when an eligible party disputes whether the National Bank Act permits a national trust bank charter, the judiciary must exercise independent judgment regarding the statutory interpretation.
The ICBA is now pursuing precisely that form of judicial review. The OCC spent 2026 granting crypto trust charters while maintaining its stance that the courts would ultimately determine their legal foundation.
Regulatory exposure differs depending on each firm’s business model: traditional fiduciary custody sits farthest from the controversy, whereas nonfiduciary custody, stablecoin issuance, reserves, payments, settlement, conversion, and execution sit closest to it.
Coinbase’s authorized plan encompasses digital asset custody in a fiduciary capacity alongside transactional services connected to the custodied assets. The OCC defended this model as falling under trust-company operations or related activities authorized by fiduciary powers and Section 24(Seventh).
Agora’s proposed operations feature dollar-backed stablecoin issuance, reserve management, nonfiduciary custody, as well as payment and settlement services. Catena merges custody, investment management, and trust services with conversion, clearing, and execution. Meanwhile, Bastion proposes white-label stablecoin issuance, custodial wallets, conversion, and issuer services.
Foris DAX’s business model combines custody with trade settlement and staking, while Bridge’s initial authorization covers custody, stablecoin issuance and orchestration, and reserve management.
The ICBA is asking the court for a vacatur alongside declaratory and injunctive remedies. The ultimate impact on current charters relies on the specific language of a judge’s ruling, including how the decision addresses final approvals, conditional authorizations, and activities backed by independent statutory authority.
The OCC reported in August that it had taken in 40 de novo charter submissions over roughly an 18-month span, with Comptroller Jonathan Gould stating that 23 of those submissions involved digital assets.
The regulator’s digital-asset licensing roster displays pending applicants such as zerohash, Dakota National Trust Bank, Payward (Kraken), Lorum National Trust Bank, EDX Trust, and PAYO Digital Bank.
Whether the agency continues to evaluate those pending submissions under current criteria while the judiciary reviews the regulation remains an open question for each applicant.
Where the court crypto test leads
If the judiciary rules in favor of the OCC, the national trust bank structure will solidify as a federal pathway for cryptocurrency custody and stablecoin infrastructure.
JPMorgan projects a market value of $500 billion by 2028, Coinbase’s projections center on $1.2 trillion by the end of 2028, and Standard Chartered anticipates reaching $2 trillion in that timeframe. Citi’s forecasts for 2030 range from a base case of $1.9 trillion to an optimistic scenario of $4 trillion.
Because FDIC-insured institutions held roughly $20.7 trillion in deposits during the second quarter, a market scale of $500 billion to $2 trillion represents approximately 2.4% to 9.7% of that deposit base. For Bitcoin, a legal victory would expand bank-supervised custody and settlement-connected offerings for institutional clients.
Should the court invalidate or restrict the regulation or the associated letter, the blow will fall most heavily on business models centered on stablecoin issuance, reserves, nonfiduciary custody, conversion, payments, and settlement.
Those enterprises might be forced to shift their operations into corporate affiliates, state-chartered trust companies, or partner-bank structures, and pending applications could encounter more rigorous scrutiny. Standalone Bitcoin custody might remain accessible, though the federal charter would offer less flexibility regarding auxiliary services like conversion, execution, settlement, staking-like functions, and collateral movement.
The San Francisco Fed projects that stablecoin issuers’ demand for Treasuries could roughly double to approximately $400 billion by 2030, granting the outcome significance that extends far beyond the crypto industry.
The extent to which nonfiduciary market infrastructure can operate inside a national trust bank is now up to a federal judge to decide—precisely where the OCC stated the issue would ultimately be resolved.