Circle receives OCC approval to operate as a national trust bank

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted final approval on July 10 for First National Digital Currency Bank, which will operate under the name Circle National Trust. The charter authorizes fiduciary digital-asset custody for Circle and its affiliates, with reserve management for USDC listed as a future capability. No deposit-taking, no lending, no FDIC insurance.

Circle joins a federal cohort that now includes Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paxos, Bridge, Crypto.com, Coinbase, Morgan Stanley, and World Liberty Financial — all carrying some form of OCC approval since December, most still completing conditions before opening. The OCC already supervised roughly 60 national trust banks before the digital-asset wave arrived; assets under administration at those institutions stood at $7.2 trillion as of March 31, including $1.7 trillion in custody and safekeeping accounts.

The national trust bank structure predates crypto by decades. Its legal center is fiduciary work: holding property, administering assets, executing instructions. That framework maps directly onto what digital-asset institutions actually need — regulated custody of private keys, segregated customer property, and reserve operations that can withstand federal examination.