Senator Warren questions OCC crypto trust charters’ legality under National Bank Act.
Summary
- Warren says OCC’s crypto trust charters “appear to far exceed” limits under the National Bank Act.
- At least nine digital asset firms have secured national trust approvals or conditional nods since late 2025.
- The senator is demanding the OCC disclose how it vetted the charters and whether it complied with statutory requirements.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has accused the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) of potentially violating the National Bank Act by greenlighting a wave of national trust bank charters for cryptocurrency firms that she says are “unqualified” and operating far beyond what federal law allows. In a letter sent this week to Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould, the Massachusetts Democrat argued that the OCC’s recent spree of crypto-related national trust charters “constitutes a clear violation of the National Bank Act” because the recipients “appear to far exceed the narrow scope of activities permitted by law.” According to Bloomberg, Warren said the agency has now approved at least nine such charters for digital asset companies that “seem to be unqualified,” and pressed Gould to explain whether his office properly applied statutory standards when evaluating their fitness to operate as national trust banks.
Warren framed the issue as a basic question of legality rather than policy discretion, writing that these crypto trusts “appear to far exceed the narrow scope of activities permitted by law” and therefore raise the prospect that the OCC is effectively rewriting the National Bank Act through chartering decisions. Her intervention comes just months after the OCC issued conditional approvals for five digital asset firms to operate as uninsured national trust banks focused on custody and settlement instead of deposits or lending, a development that has intensified debate over how far existing banking law can be stretched to accommodate digital assets. The senator’s latest letter also questions whether the regulator adhered to all relevant legal provisions during the approval process and requests clarification on the compliance of the cryptocurrency companies in obtaining banking charters.
Warren targets OCC’s crypto trust push
The OCC has spent the past year methodically opening federal trust routes for crypto firms, arguing that custody, settlement, and “riskless principal” crypto-asset transactions fall within the business of banking when properly supervised under its existing authority. In December 2025, it confirmed that national banks may act as riskless principals in crypto-asset trades so long as positions are matched and not held in inventory, effectively blessing broker-like intermediation in digital assets under existing law. Industry advocates portray the trust charter route as a way to bring large-scale digital asset custody and settlement under a uniform federal supervisor.
Broader fight over crypto in the banking system
Warren, however, has repeatedly warned that handing national trust charters to crypto players without tight statutory grounding could entrench regulatory arbitrage and political favoritism at the core of the banking system. Her earlier clashes over high-profile charter bids have already highlighted concerns about the OCC’s independence and the risk that crypto firms could gain banking privileges without commensurate safeguards. Gould has previously insisted that crypto charter reviews are “apolitical and nonpartisan,” but Warren’s new letter demands detailed documentation of the legal analyses underpinning each approval and an accounting of how the OCC concluded that these digital asset firms qualify as national trust banks under the National Bank Act. The confrontation now sets up a broader test of how far U.S. banking law can be pushed to accommodate crypto infrastructure before Congress is forced to clarify, or curtail, the OCC’s authority.
