Author: Conflux

The five licenses issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) are thoroughly welding the world's largest financial system 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 charters.

This marks a transformation where crypto giants, which dominate the circulation of trillions of dollars in assets, have collectively shifted from the margins to become part of a "federal-level banking infrastructure."

A transformation aimed at seizing the future rights to issue and settle digital cash through "licensed banking" is fully erupting at the intersection of Wall Street and Crypto Valley.

A Strategic Upgrade of a License

For crypto companies, the value of the National Trust Bank Charter far exceeds any previous state-level licenses. It signifies:

• Federal oversight with unified rules: Directly regulated by the OCC, freeing them from the fragmented regulatory challenges posed by the 50 states in the U.S.
• Access to the "heart": Direct connection to the Federal Reserve's clearing network (such as Fedwire), gaining low-cost, real-time efficient fund settlement capabilities.
• Equal rights and responsibilities: Legally able to conduct core businesses such as digital asset custody and trust, managing a full range of assets for clients from cryptocurrencies to traditional stocks.

OCC Acting Comptroller Jonathan Gould stated in the announcement that new entrants "benefit the dynamics, competition, and diversity of the banking system."

This clearly conveys a shift in U.S. regulation: from past scrutiny and containment of crypto innovation to actively incorporating it into a new framework of "system manageability" that is regulatory and collaborative.

Why Now?

The key loosening of U.S. financial regulation reflects a trio of policy, market, and endogenous dynamics—

First, from the breakthrough of the spot Bitcoin ETF in 2024 to the "innovation-friendly" policy tone of the Trump administration in 2025, the shift in regulatory winds is a direct driving force.

The OCC made it clear in its guidance last November that banks can incorporate crypto assets and blockchain into their core businesses, clearing the last ideological barriers for this batch of licenses.

Secondly, the issuance, custody, and clearing of trillion-dollar market cap stablecoins have long operated outside the traditional banking system, posing systemic risks of "custody black boxes" and "run panic." For institutional funds, bank-level trust and transparency are prerequisites for entry.

Finally, in the fierce market competition, whoever can provide a stable, low-cost fiat-crypto channel holds the lifeblood of traffic. A bank license not only means the ability to accept deposits and secure stable funding sources but also serves as a system-level moat against market volatility.

As Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla stated, this has ushered them into a "new phase of federal regulation."

The "Banking" Roadmap of the Five Giants

The five companies approved have precisely positioned themselves at key nodes in the digital asset ecosystem, and their strategic intentions are clear—

• Circle: Through First National Digital Currency Bank, elevating the compliance model of USDC to a bank level, aiming to make stablecoins the digital dollar settlement layer in the Federal Reserve payment system.
• Ripple: Establishing Ripple National Trust Bank, aiming to leverage its expertise in cross-border payments to completely resolve the long-standing compliance issues of XRP in global clearing and settlement with a banking identity.
• Paxos & BitGo: Upgrading from state-level licenses to national licenses, respectively enhancing their "federal-level" credibility and business scope in stablecoin issuance and institutional asset custody.
• Fidelity Digital Assets: As a representative of traditional asset management giants, its transformation signifies that Wall Street's old money also believes it must use a banking identity to safely and compliantly manage trillion-level traditional capital exposure to crypto assets.

These five institutions are collaboratively drawing a comprehensive banking ecosystem blueprint covering "issuance-custody-payment-asset management."

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

The essence of the bank license is to open a compliant, direct "official pipeline" to the Federal Reserve. Once the connection is completed, the clearing speed of stablecoins will shorten from the traditional T+1 or even longer to nearly real-time, with costs dropping to extremely low levels. This will greatly solidify the position of compliant stablecoins like USDC and may reshape the flow paths of global capital.

In the future, possessing a bank-level license will become the cornerstone supporting stablecoins, RWA (real-world assets), and complex DeFi applications. The trillion-dollar downstream market will unfold from here.

The OCC's move not only issues a "legal pass" for the crypto industry but may also be laying the groundwork for the dollar system to extend its global settlement hegemony in the digital age, strategically positioning key digital infrastructure. As crypto giants don the "banking cloak," a silent escalation of the shadow war over future financial sovereignty has already begun.

*This content is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. The market has risks; investment requires caution.

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