ICBA Sues OCC Over 21 Trust Charters Given to Crypto Firms

Twenty-one. That is how many national trust bank charters the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has approved or conditionally approved since the start of the Trump administration, and at least 13 of those charters went to companies whose core business is cryptocurrency. The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) sued the OCC over those approvals on October 2, 2026, arguing the agency gave crypto firms a federal bank charter without the fiduciary duties Congress required.

What ICBA is arguing in court

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and names the OCC along with Comptroller Jonathan Gould in his official capacity. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. It also names Comptroller Jonathan Gould in his official capacity. The case is brought under the Administrative Procedure Act and targets two specific OCC actions. The lawsuit filed under the Administrative Procedure Act against the OCC centers on the March 2, 2026, final rule related to Interpretive Letter No. 1176.

ICBA's core legal claim is that the National Bank Act lets the OCC charter national trust banks to perform fiduciary activities, and that the agency used that authority far beyond its limits. The ICBA alleges in the lawsuit that the OCC has "far exceeded its limited statutory authority to charter trust banks that perform certain fiduciary activities." The group describes the result as a significant expansion of the agency's own power that creates a regulatory gap, American Banker reported.

ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey framed the complaint around what account holders assume they are getting. Rainey said "American consumers reasonably expect a federally chartered bank to carry federal protections," while digital assets held under a crypto trust charter lack those safeguards. American Banker reported that an OCC spokesperson said the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Which companies hold the charters at issue

The complaint itself names only one company directly. Conditionally approved national trust bank charters include Protego Holdings Corp., which ICBA opposed, citing severely flawed risk and control functions and governance structures that lack independent oversight.

The broader list of crypto firms that have received OCC trust charters since late 2025 is longer, based on a review of OCC decisions and company announcements compiled by Yahoo Finance. December 2025 brought conditional approvals for Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos. Circle won final approval in July. February 2026 added conditional approvals for Stripe-owned Bridge, Crypto.com, and Protego. Coinbase followed on April 2, and Nomura's digital asset arm Laser Digital on May 29. World Liberty Trust Company, backed by the Trump family, received conditional approval in August.

Why this matters for community banks and their customers

A national trust charter is not the same as a standard FDIC-insured bank charter, and that distinction is central to ICBA's complaint. Unlike community banks, national trust banks that do not take deposits fall outside much of federal financial regulation, including FDIC insurance, Community Reinvestment Act obligations, and the capital and liquidity standards that apply to ordinary banks. ICBA argues that gap lets crypto trust banks compete for customers while carrying lower compliance costs, saying the exemption from federal regulation puts community banks "at an unfair disadvantage."

The filing also points to a historical first for the agency. Prior to the recent influx of national trust applications and approvals, the OCC had never chartered a national bank that neither took deposits nor engaged in fiduciary activities, and the OCC has not managed an uninsured bank receivership in nearly 100 years. That means the agency has no recent operational precedent for winding down one of these entities if a crypto trust bank were to fail, a question the complaint raises but does not resolve.

The timing of the charter wave tracks federal stablecoin policy. The OCC has seen a sharp uptick in applications for trust charters from crypto companies after Trump signed into law a stablecoin bill, known as the GENIUS Act. The new law made trust charters more desirable for crypto firms because it allows the firms to become federal qualified payment stablecoin issuers. That sequence, reported by American Banker, is a plausible driver of the 2025-2026 charter wave, though the lawsuit itself challenges OCC's chartering authority rather than the GENIUS Act's stablecoin provisions.

What is still unknown

No briefing schedule or hearing date for the case had been reported as of the filing, so readers should not expect a near-term ruling. It is also not yet confirmed whether other banking trade groups will formally join the suit as parties. Law360's case tracker lists the Bank Policy Institute alongside the Independent Community Bankers of America in its case information for the filing. Neither the ICBA statement nor American Banker's reporting confirms the Bank Policy Institute as a formal co-plaintiff, so that detail remains unverified pending the actual docket. The outcome will turn on whether a court finds the OCC's reading of the National Bank Act's trust-charter provision a permissible interpretation of an ambiguous statute or an unlawful expansion of agency power, a legal question the complaint raises but does not itself decide.