United States national bank charters are what all the cool crypto kids want for Christmas, and five lucky ones got their wishes last week.
With Congress accepting the unlikelihood of holding a digital asset market structure legislative markup session this week (the final week of the 2025 Congressional calendar), crypto bros are looking for other reasons to celebrate and distract them from this disappointing regulatory setback.
On December 12, the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced conditional approvals of five national trust bank charter applications. Subject to certain conditions, these five institutions will join ~60 other national trust banks under the OCC’s remit.
First National Digital Currency Bank (USDC issuer Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL) and Ripple Labs’ Ripple National Trust Bank saw their de novo applications conditionally approved. The OCC also conditionally approved applications from BitGo Bank & Trust, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos Trust Company to convert from a state trust company to a national trust bank.
Bitgo (USDS), Circle (USDC and others), Paxos (PYUSD and others), and Ripple (RLUSD) all issue stablecoins, and the new diplomas will allow them to custody their own assets rather than farm them out to other OCC-approved entities.
The new banks won’t be able to accept cash deposits or issue loans to customers, but OCC chief Jonathan Gould said they “provide access to new products, services and sources of credit to consumers, and ensure a dynamic, competitive and diverse banking system.”
This digital asset banking path was blazed by Anchorage Digital, which earned its OCC nod way back in 2021 and has had this market all to itself until now.
That market will get even more crowded if the rest of the crypto bank wannabes—the Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) and Crypto.com digital asset exchanges, Stripe’s stablecoin-issuing offshoot Bridge, Sony’s Connectiva, and Brazilian neobank Nubank—find similar goodies in their Christmas stockings.
Last week, the OCC cleared U.S. national banks to engage in “riskless principal crypto-asset transactions,” based on the OCC’s view that these types of transactions were the functional equivalent of recognized brokerage activities.
Not everyone is clicking their heels over the OCC’s new crypto-positive stance. The American Bankers Association (ABA) said the approvals “could blur the lines of what it means to be a bank and create opportunities for regulatory arbitrage. Clear answers are needed to ensure the public and policymakers understand how these charters will be supervised and how risks will be mitigated.”
The Bank Policy Institute (BPI) was similarly skeptical, saying the OCC’s decision “leaves substantial unanswered questions,” including “whether the requirements the OCC has outlined for the applicants are appropriately tailored to the activities and risks in which the trust will engage.”
The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) questioned the OCC’s authority to dole out the new diplomas, saying the decision “further stretches the national trust bank charter beyond its statutory and historical purpose, endangers consumers, and creates institutions the OCC is not equipped to resolve in an orderly way.”
SEC’s tokenization train has lost its brakes
Over at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), its Division of Trading and Market issued a no-action letter on December 11 to The Depository Trust Company (DTC), an offshoot of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), regarding DTC’s “development and launch of a preliminary version of its voluntary securities tokenization program on supported blockchains [names to be revealed later] that meet DTC’s technology standards.”
In a statement accompanying the letter, SEC commissioner Hester Peirce clarified that DTC’s program “will enable the tokenization of security entitlements to certain eligible securities that DTC’s participants hold through DTC (tokenized entitlements). Any DTC participant with a registered wallet will be able to transfer its tokenized entitlement directly to the registered wallet of another DTC participant.”
The program is expected to launch in the second half of 2026, with an initial focus on Russell 1000 equities, U.S. Treasury bills, major index-focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and more. The tokenized equities will retain the ownership rights and investor protections afforded to those who hold the underlying security.
While the program will have clipped wings to start, Peirce said it “marks a significant incremental step in moving markets onchain. DTC plays a central role in our securities markets. I am looking forward to seeing how DTC’s participants benefit from this program and the extent to which DTC’s tokenization model can enhance the functioning of our securities markets.”
Peirce said this “promising step along the tokenization journey” was being explored by other market participants in “alternate experimental avenues.” Peirce said the SEC’s crypto work “is iterative. We welcome and expect other market participants’ continuing efforts to innovate and experiment,” although she cautioned that “different tokenization structures may raise distinct regulatory considerations.”
DTCC tweeted that the program’s approval was “an historic milestone.” SEC Chair Paul Atkins tweeted his own delight at the news, saying, “on-chain markets will bring greater predictability, transparency, and efficiency for investors.”
Atkins has called tokenization ‘job one’ for his SEC and its Project Crypto deregulatory push. His DTCC comments also demonstrate his desire to issue ‘innovation exemptions’ to crypto operators so that they can “begin transitioning our markets on-chain by harnessing new technologies and business models—without being burdened by cumbersome regulatory requirements.”
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JPM tokenizes MONY money market fund
The private sector isn’t waiting on these exemptions to start innovating, as evidenced by JPMorgan (NASDAQ: JPM)
announcing the launch of My OnChain Net Yield Fund (MONY), a tokenized money market fund (MMF) residing on the Ethereum network. MONY makes JPM the largest global systemically important bank (GSIB) to launch a tokenized MMF on a public network.
MONY is issued by JPM’s Kinexys Digital Assets multi-chain tokenization platform, and investors can subscribe/redeem using cash or Circle’s USDC. MONY will invest only in U.S. Treasury securities and repurchase agreements (repos) fully collateralized by U.S. Treasury securities. Investors can access MONY via JPM’s Morgan Money open architecture and analytics platform for liquidity management.
JPM Asset Management head of global liquidity John Donohue celebrated JPM being “a first mover” but expected other GSIBs to “follow our lead in providing clients with greater optionality in how they invest in money market funds.”
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Watch: Richard Baker on engineering a smarter financial world with blockchain
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Source: https://coingeek.com/us-treasury-okays-five-crypto-national-bank-charter-applications/
