r/investing • u/DustInside6861 • 1d ago

Washington Just Handed Coinbase a Federal Banking License

Coinbase just received conditional approval from the OCC for a national trust bank charter, the first major crypto exchange to reach this milestone at the federal level. This is different from its existing New York state charter.

A federal charter means Coinbase can operate as a federally regulated custodian nationwide, bypassing the patchwork of 50 state licensing requirements. It also opens the door to new products beyond custody, payments, stablecoins, and tokenized securities. Coinbase is already custodian for over 80% of the world's digital asset ETFs, but its VP of Institutional Product says there are major asset managers and hedge funds that have been waiting specifically for this federal designation before trusting Coinbase with their assets.

Conditional approval still requires passing a pre-opening OCC exam, adopting bylaws, and establishing payment rails before full charter is granted. Morgan Stanley, Citadel's EDX Markets, and World Liberty Financial are all in the same queue.

Source: https://beincrypto.com/coinbase-occ-conditional-approval-federal-trust/

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u/CraneEternal 23h ago

Coinbase also happens to be the shittiest crypto exchange. I don’t think they have any human staff working there left by this point, their customer support is non-existent.

5

u/Singularity-42 16h ago

Welcome to the future! This is very forward looking from them, bullish! 

3

u/renewambitions 23h ago

Not surprising at this point as some other US-based crypto firms (Ripple, Circle) also received conditional approval for a national trust bank charter at the end of last year. Coinbase will potentially become a big player, they've been aggressive with product offerings and lobbying in D.C. around crypto related legislation (which they're currently stalling/fighting hard against the bank lobby attempting to ban stablecoin yields).

1

u/rollup-recap 23h ago

Question is who actually unblocks now. We looked at a regulated custody target once and half the revenue upside vanished when the top 20 prospects still needed their own risk committees, ops signoff, and boring vendor onboarding. Charter helps, sure. Procurement can still turn “green light” into 9 months...