Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, is calling on Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould to further explain what she calls his agency’s allegedly “improper” approval of several national trust charters for cryptocurrency firms.
National trust charters have been awarded to firms that “intend to engage in activities that appear to go far beyond the narrow set of activities permitted by law,” and such firms “want to evade the fundamental safeguards and obligations that come with being a bank,” Warren wrote in a letter Monday.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency under Gould has ramped up de novo chartering, including in its conditional award of national trust charters – which allow entities to offer some, but not all, services of a traditional bank – to nine crypto companies, such as Paxos and Coinbase.
“Despite the clear legal distinction between national trust companies and full-service national banks, the OCC has recently approved at least nine national trust company charters – with several more applications pending – for companies that look like crypto banks, not trust companies,” Warren wrote.
One awardee, Protego National Digital Trust Co., said in its application that it would operate a crypto “custody platform, a trading platform, a lending/borrowing platform, and an issuer services platform.”
Coinbase National Trust Co. in its own application, said it would “enable Custody clients to access staking, financing, and trading services,” and “explore the launch of other digital asset products, including payments products.”
It’s a somewhat rare instance of alignment between Warren and bank lobbyists, which have considered taking legal action against the OCC over the issue.
An OCC spokesperson did not respond by deadline to a request for comment on Warren’s letter.
Warren asked the OCC to provide by June 1 the full charter applications for all nine approved firms, as well as legal analysis supporting the agency’s decisions and all communications between the OCC and the White House – or Trump family members – regarding charter approvals.
