Coinbase has received an unconditional national trust charter, 13 months after applying with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the company announced Monday.
Coinbase National Trust Co. received the regulator’s unconditional nod Friday, joining the list of national trust banks born of cryptocurrency companies which includes Ripple, Circle and BitGo.
With a national trust charter, Coinbase can now operate under the OCC’s federal framework to provide digital asset custody, settlement and stablecoin reserve management.
“The regulators actually make us better at what we do,” Rick Schonberg, CEO of Coinbase National Trust Charter and Coinbase’s head of trading and custody, said Monday in an interview with Banking Dive.
While federal regulation means more scrutiny, “to me, that isn't scary. That's encouraging,” he said. “As we do our jobs better as a custodian and as a fiduciary, that only means our clients' assets are even more secure. And given what's going on in the universe, that's only a good thing.”
Coinbase applied for a national trust charter in October 2025 and snagged a conditional charter in April, but charter plans date back more than two years, Schonberg said. That pre-dates the second Trump administration, which has enacted crypto-friendly rules and appointed crypto-friendly regulators.
Coinbase is “administration-agnostic,” Schonberg said, adding that the company has worked with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Schonberg hails from traditional finance, having spent nearly a decade each at JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Coinbase received a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services in 2017, and the following year, Coinbase Custody Trust Co. received a New York limited-purpose trust charter.
“The OCC approval marks the next iteration of that commitment: bringing Coinbase National Trust Company’s trust activities into a consistent federal regulatory framework, while building on the strong foundation we developed with NYDFS,” Schonberg wrote in a blog post Monday.
Coinbase will continue to work with the NYDFS, Schonberg said. But with an eye on growth over the next decade, “operating with a federal charter makes more sense.”
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has long expressed an interest in working with regulators, including when the crypto exchange was subject to a securities enforcement in 2023.
At the time, Armstrong said he was “excited to work with all governments and regulators” to create clear regulations on the crypto world. The securities enforcement has since been withdrawn.
Now that it has secured a trust charter, Coinbase National Trust Co. will start with its core custodial offering, with other variations of that model to follow, Schonberg said.
Editor’s note: Rick Schonberg’s title was updated.
