Coinbase Gets Its Federal Charter
The OCC granted Coinbase a full national trust charter on 6 November, upgrading April’s conditional approval, per Bitcoin Magazine — Coinbase National Trust Company must hold $60M minimum capital and plans to migrate custody from its New York-regulated entity over three years; it cannot take deposits, lend or issue stablecoins. The grant follows Circle’s and Ripple’s, completing the charter wave ICBA is suing over.
Coinbase Charter: who actually holds the Bitcoin
A federal custody charter sounds like a seal of safety. Read the small print: crypto held in custody carries no government deposit insurance. None. The $60 million capital floor protects the company’s solvency, not your coins — client assets sit in trust, which keeps them off the bank’s books but doesn’t make them unhackable. Ask Binance.
The iShares Bitcoin fund’s own paperwork names Coinbase as custodian of the actual bitcoin. The biggest bitcoin funds don’t hold bitcoin. Coinbase does, on their behalf — now under federal supervision, with most US ETF bitcoin already in its vaults.
That’s the quiet cost of the ETF boom. Sound money whose whole point is holding your own keys, pooled into one federally chartered vault. Convenient. Also exactly the concentration bitcoin was built to avoid.
And note the date. The charter completed on Friday — three days after an election that hands the Senate committee overseeing the OCC to Elizabeth Warren, whose named first target is these charters. The vault is federal. So, from January, is the fight over it.
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3 sources
- CROWDFUNDINSIDER: Coinbase Now a National Trust Company · crowdfundinsider.com · T2
- Coinbase Trust Bank Opens: What Changes, and for Whom · coindoo.com · T2
- Coinbase Wins Full Federal Trust Charter From OCC · bitcoinmagazine.com · T1