The American Bankers Association has urged the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to delay approving national trust bank charters for cryptocurrency firms until Congress finalizes key legislation. The banking lobby warned that granting charters conditioned on compliance with the unfinished GENIUS Act could allow crypto companies premature access to the Federal Reserve system before their regulatory obligations are fully defined, posing risks to financial stability.
America’s largest banking lobby is telling the country’s top bank regulator to slow its crypto charter application process. In a comment letter submitted Wednesday, the American Bankers Association urged the OCC to ensure safety standards are upheld during rapid innovation. The association criticized the practice of conditioning approvals on the GENIUS Act, a law whose full implementation is likely years away.
The ABA argued the OCC should be patient and allow each applicant’s regulatory responsibilities to become clear before moving applications forward. It also raised alarms over resolution risk, pointing to the collapses of FTX and Celsius in 2022. The letter marks the latest effort by banking groups to shape crypto’s expansion into federally regulated finance.
Several major crypto firms, including Circle, Ripple, and Coinbase, are pursuing or hold conditional OCC trust bank charters. “Once these firms get Fed access and national licensing, we will be talking about skipping the whole middle layer—no SWIFT, no correspondent chains, just native, regulated settlement,” said Anthony Agoshkov, co-founder of Marvel Capital. This push reflects a broader campaign by banks to limit crypto’s integration.
Last month, the ABA’s Community Bankers Council sent a letter to lawmakers warning that crypto firms were skirting the GENIUS Act’s ban on stablecoin interest payments. That pressure influenced the crypto market structure bill, where banks secured language banning any yield on stablecoin holdings. This prompted Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to withdraw support for the legislation, warning it would be worse than the status quo.
