Overview
- Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Comptroller Jonathan Gould alleging the OCC’s approvals of national trust charters for crypto firms violate the National Bank Act and requesting legal analyses and any communications with President Trump or his family.
- Warren says the approved firms look like banks because their plans describe non‑fiduciary custody, payments, lending, and stablecoin activities that resemble deposit‑taking, which she argues could put consumers and the wider banking system at risk.
- Reports say at least nine approvals or conditional approvals since late 2025 went to companies including Coinbase, Circle, Ripple, Paxos, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, Crypto.com, Stripe, and Protego.
- She also flagged a pending application tied to World Liberty Financial and asked how the OCC handles reviews for applicants with political ties, seeking records to test for impartial procedures.
- The OCC has not issued a new reply to the letter, and Gould has previously said the reviews are apolitical and aimed at bringing crypto custody under federal oversight, pointing to the limited scope of trust charters and 2025 guidance that let banks intermediate matched crypto trades as riskless principals.