Author: Conflux

The five licenses issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) are completely welding the world's largest financial system together with the cutting-edge world of digital assets.

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

This signifies that the crypto giants, who dominate the flow of trillions of dollars in assets, have collectively transformed from the periphery into "federal-level banking infrastructure."

A “licensed banking” transformation aimed at seizing the right to issue and settle digital cash in the future is in full swing at the intersection of Wall Street and Crypto Valley.

A strategic upgrade of a license

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

• Federal regulation and unified rules: Directly regulated by the OCC, it breaks free from the fragmented regulatory dilemma of the 50 states in the United States each "sounding their own tune".
• Access to the “heart”: Direct connection to the Federal Reserve’s clearing network (such as Fedwire) to obtain low-cost, real-time, and efficient fund settlement capabilities.
• Equal rights and responsibilities: It can legally carry out core businesses such as digital asset custody and trust, and manage a full range of assets for clients, from cryptocurrencies to traditional stocks.

In a statement, OCC Acting Director Jonathan Gould said that new entrants "benefit the dynamics, competition, and diversification of the banking system."

This clearly conveys a shift in US regulation: from scrutinizing and blocking crypto innovation in the past to proactively incorporating it into a new framework of "system manageability" that is both regulatory and collaborative.

Why now?

The key easing of US financial regulation reflects a three-pronged approach involving policy, market forces, and endogenous drivers.

First, the shift in regulatory focus was a direct driving force, from the groundbreaking launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs in 2024 to the Trump administration's "innovation-friendly" policy tone in 2025.

The OCC's guidance last November clearly stated that banks could incorporate crypto assets and blockchain into their core business, clearing the final ideological obstacle for this batch of licenses.

Secondly, the issuance, custody, and clearing of stablecoins with a market capitalization of trillions of dollars have long operated outside the traditional banking system, posing systemic risks of "custody black boxes" and "bank run panics." For institutional funds, bank-level trust and transparency are prerequisites for entry.

Ultimately, in the fierce market competition, whoever can provide a stable, low-cost fiat-to-cryptocurrency channel will control the lifeline of liquidity. A banking license not only means the ability to accept deposits and obtain a stable source of funds, but also serves as a systemic moat against market fluctuations.

As Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla put it, this marks the beginning of a "new phase of federal regulation."

The "banking" roadmap of the five giants

The five companies that received approval this time have precisely positioned themselves at key nodes in the digital asset ecosystem, and their strategic intentions are clearly visible.

• Circle: Through First National Digital Currency Bank, it elevates USDC's compliance model to bank level, aiming to make stablecoins a digital dollar settlement layer in the Federal Reserve's payment system.
• Ripple established Ripple National Trust Bank, aiming to leverage its expertise in cross-border payments to completely resolve XRP's long-standing compliance challenges in global clearing and settlement through its banking status.
• Paxos & BitGo: Upgrading from state-level licenses to national licenses strengthens their "federal-level" credibility and business scope in the fields of stablecoin issuance and institutional-grade asset custody, respectively.
• Fidelity Digital Assets: As a representative of traditional asset management giants, its transformation signifies that even Wall Street veterans believe it is necessary to use a banking identity to safely and compliantly manage trillions of dollars of traditional capital exposure to crypto assets.

These five institutions are working together to create a blueprint for a fully integrated banking ecosystem covering "issuance-custody-payment-asset management".

The core driving force behind this wave of "banking" stems from the fact that the stablecoin market has expanded to a massive $300 billion. However, the clearing and settlement of such a huge amount of digital cash still largely circulates outside the traditional banking system.

The banking license essentially opens a compliant, direct "official channel" to the Federal Reserve. Once the connection is complete, the settlement speed for stablecoins will be shortened from the traditional T+1 or even longer to near real-time, with costs reduced to extremely low levels. This will greatly solidify the position of compliant stablecoins such as USDC and may reshape the flow of global funds.

In the future, possessing a compliance foundation with banking-grade licenses will become the cornerstone supporting stablecoins, RWAs (Real-World Assets), and complex DeFi applications. A trillion-dollar downstream market will unfold from here.

This move by the OCC not only grants the crypto industry a "legitimate license," but may also be a strategic move to lay the groundwork for critical digital infrastructure, ensuring the dollar system maintains its global settlement dominance in the digital age. As crypto giants increasingly adopt banking credentials, a covert battle for future financial sovereignty has quietly escalated.

*The content of this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Investing involves risk; please invest cautiously.