The US crypto "banking" era begins: Five giants receive federal licenses, shaking up trillion-dollar settlement rights

U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has approved five crypto institutions—Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos—to obtain nationwide trust bank charters.
(Background recap: White House crypto roundtable on “stablecoin interest” reached no consensus, with banks strongly opposing: maintaining stability for household and small-medium enterprise credit and finance)
(Additional background: Financial Supervisory Commission: Taiwanese import/export companies are “already using stablecoins for payments,” and some banks are laying out plans)

Table of Contents

• Strategic Upgrade of a Single License
• Why Now?
• The “Banking” Roadmap of the Five Giants

The five licenses handed over by the OCC are thoroughly integrating the world’s largest financial system with the cutting-edge digital asset space.

Among them, five core crypto institutions—Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos—have officially received or been approved to upgrade to nationwide trust bank licenses.

This marks that crypto giants, which dominate trillions of dollars in asset flows, have shifted from the fringe to becoming “federally recognized banking infrastructure.”

A transformation aimed at “licensed banking” to seize future digital cash issuance and settlement rights is erupting at the intersection of Wall Street and Crypto Valley.

Strategic Upgrade of a Single License

For crypto companies, this National Trust Bank Charter is far more valuable than any previous state-level license. It signifies:

• Federal oversight, unified rules: directly regulated by the OCC, eliminating the regulatory fragmentation of the 50 U.S. states.
• Access to the “heart”: direct connection to the Federal Reserve’s clearing networks (like Fedwire), enabling low-cost, real-time, efficient fund settlement.
• Equal rights and responsibilities: legally capable of conducting core activities such as digital asset custody and trust services, managing a full range of assets from cryptocurrencies to traditional stocks for clients.

OCC Acting Comptroller Jonathan G. Gould explicitly stated in the announcement that “new entrants are beneficial for the dynamics, competition, and diversity of the banking system.”

This clearly signals a regulatory shift in the U.S.: from past scrutiny and containment of crypto innovation to actively integrating it into a new “systemic manageability” framework that is regulated and collaborative.

Why Now?

The key loosening of U.S. financial regulation reflects a trio of policy, market, and endogenous drivers—

First, from the breakthrough of spot Bitcoin ETFs in 2024 to the Trump administration’s “innovation-friendly” policy tone in 2025, the regulatory landscape is shifting, acting as a direct catalyst.

Last November, the OCC issued guidance explicitly stating that banks can incorporate crypto assets and blockchain into core operations, clearing the final mental hurdles for mass licensing.

Second, the issuance, custody, and clearing of trillion-dollar stablecoins have long operated outside traditional banking systems, posing systemic risks like “custody black boxes” and “bank runs.” For institutional capital, bank-level trust and transparency are prerequisites for entry.

Finally, in fierce market competition, whoever can provide stable, low-cost fiat-to-crypto channels controls the flow of traffic. Bank licenses not only mean access to deposits and stable funding sources but also serve as a systemic moat against market volatility.

As Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla said, this move places them into a “new phase of federal regulation.”

The “Banking” Roadmap of the Five Giants

The five companies approved this time precisely target key nodes in the digital asset ecosystem, with clear strategic intent—

• Circle: Through First National Digital Currency Bank, elevates the compliance model of USDC to bank-level, aiming to make stablecoins the digital dollar settlement layer within the Federal Reserve’s payment system.
• Ripple: Establishes Ripple National Trust Bank, aiming to leverage its expertise in cross-border payments to solve XRP’s long-standing compliance issues in global clearing and settlement with a banking identity.
• Paxos & BitGo: Upgrading from state licenses to nationwide licenses, strengthening their “federally trusted” reputation and scope in stablecoin issuance and institutional asset custody.
• Fidelity Digital Assets: As a representative of traditional asset management giants, its transformation signals that Wall Street’s old money also recognizes the need for a banking identity to securely and compliantly manage trillions of traditional capital exposure to crypto assets.

These five institutions are collaboratively drawing a comprehensive “issuance – custody – payment – asset management” full-chain banking ecosystem blueprint.

The core driver of this “banking” wave is the stablecoin market, which has ballooned to a size of $300 billion. However, most of the digital cash’s clearing and settlement still occurs outside traditional banking channels.

The essence of a bank license is to open a compliant, direct “official water pipe” to the Federal Reserve. Once connected, the settlement speed of stablecoins could be reduced from T+1 or longer to near-instant, with costs dropping significantly. This will greatly strengthen the position of compliant stablecoins like USDC and could reshape global capital flow routes.

In the future, owning a banking-grade license will be the foundation for supporting stablecoins, RWA (Real World Assets), and complex DeFi applications. The downstream trillion-dollar markets will unfold from here.

OCC’s move is not only a “green light” for the crypto industry but also a strategic step to extend the dollar’s global settlement dominance into the digital age, laying out critical digital infrastructure in advance. As crypto giants “don their banking attire,” a covert battle over future financial sovereignty has quietly escalated.