In May 2026, U.S. federal regulators pressed forward with a three-pronged acceleration: on one hand, Kraken's parent company Payward officially knocked on the door of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to apply for the establishment of Payward National Trust Company (PNTC), seeking to include digital asset custody services under the umbrella of the national trust license approved by this federal agency responsible for nationwide banking and national trust company licensing; on the other hand, the long-stalled Clarity Act, which addresses reserve income disputes, was brought back to the agenda after Senators Tom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks proposed a compromise plan prohibiting payments on static reserves and allowing payments on active instruments. The Senate Banking Committee locked in time for May 14 at 10:30 a.m., preparing to conduct a crucial markup vote to determine whether this "transparency law" could exit the committee; meanwhile, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michelle Bowman publicly stated on May 9 that new regulatory reporting requirements will be introduced for commercial banks, requiring large banks to disclose total assets, net profits, leverage ratios, and other indicators related to their lending to non-deposit financial institutions (NDFIs) to enhance the visibility of this shadow funding chain. The licensing line focuses on who can legally custody assets, the transparency line targets information disclosure in the digital asset market, and the lending report line brings traditional banks' funding flows to non-deposit institutions into sharper reporting views. These three regulatory threads intertwining in the same month pose the real question: when federal-level regulations undergo comprehensive escalation, where will the originally blurred boundary between crypto business and traditional finance be drawn, and who will guard it?

Kraken's Parent Company Rushes for OCC License

In the same May when federal regulation advanced on three fronts, Kraken's parent company Payward inscribed the answer on its license—submitting an application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish the Payward National Trust Company (PNTC), aiming to secure a national trust company license. For Payward, this is not merely a shell company change; rather, it's about pulling the digital asset custody business from a patchwork of multi-state compliance structures into the federal regulatory hub of the OCC, using the national trust license as the unified regulatory entry for nationwide operations, regarded internally as a critical leap toward the "federalization" of custody services.

The national trust company license differs from traditional state-level licenses primarily in business boundaries: once approved, the former can theoretically provide custody services across the U.S. under unified regulatory standards, no longer relying on state exemptions and case-by-case negotiations; the trade-off is higher and more persistent compliance costs—the OCC's periodic inspections, more stringent risk management requirements, and clearer capital expectations will push custody businesses toward bank-like regulatory intensity. For Kraken's existing and potential clients, this step is equivalent to handing them a "federal regulatory endorsement" brochure, especially for institutional clients who need to explain custody arrangements to boards and auditors. Choosing a platform that follows the national trust path versus one still operating under state licenses or in a "gray area" magnifies the compliance risk exposure difference. Thus, Payward's move toward the OCC not only adds a federal barrier to its custody business but also, in turn, raises the compliance comparison benchmarks for peers, casting those trading platforms not yet traversing the federal license pathway into a more glaring spotlight.

Transparency Act Unfrozen: Compromise on Income Terms

Almost synchronously with Payward's choice to pursue the federal trust license path, the Senate Banking Committee reinstated the long-dormant Clarity Act into consideration. This bill, originally intended to "draw lines" for crypto-related markets, had previously been stuck on clauses related to income from fiat-backed token reserves: whether and under what conditions interest can be paid on underlying reserves or related assets. There had been a long-standing lack of consensus within the committee, and thus the bill was halted at the procedural threshold, failing to enter the real line-by-line review phase.

The deadlock was broken by a compromise design led by Senators Tom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks: interest shall not be paid on reserves deemed "static," while income can be generated under certain conditions for active pegged tokens. This distinction effectively legally separates "pure reserve interest" from "income based on actual use or trading activities," providing an internal compromise point for the Banking Committee. With enough support, this proposal saw the Clarity Act officially scheduled for consideration on May 14. The Banking Committee plans to hold a markup voting hearing on May 14 at 10:30 a.m. This vote is both procedural—determining whether the bill qualifies to advance to the full Senate—and a watershed moment for the future compliance paths of income products: if the compromise terms are successfully written into the version, earning interest from static reserves would face explicit prohibition at the federal level, while structures designed around active assets might obtain a relatively clear regulatory pathway. For all income products dependent on interest models, this committee vote will be a decisive watershed for their compliance future in the U.S.

Federal Reserve Targets Bank Lending to Shadow Finance

As the Senate draws lines on income products, the Federal Reserve turns its attention to the other end of the funding pipeline. On May 9, Vice Chair Michelle Bowman publicly announced the introduction of new regulatory reporting requirements specifically targeting commercial banks' lending behaviors to private credit companies and other non-deposit financial institutions (NDFIs) to enhance the transparency of this "off-balance-sheet credit chain." According to publicly available information, this new reporting will cover large banks, requiring them to disclose core indicators related to their lending to NDFIs, including total assets, net profits, and leverage ratios, in order to clarify who banks are leveraging and to what extent. The regulators' real concern is that this funding, "double-leveraged" through the shadow financial system, might be directed toward higher-risk, more volatile asset pools, which are difficult to capture in traditional reporting format.

Once these disclosure obligations are implemented, the previously relatively hidden credit chain between banks and shadow financial institutions will be forced to illuminate: the scale, profitability quality, and leverage levels of NDFIs will directly enter the regulatory purview, making it harder to mask banks' indirect exposures to high-leverage, high-volatility assets as "ordinary corporate credit." For crypto-related businesses relying on NDFIs for funding, this implies dual pressures: first, banks' risk preferences towards shadow financial partners will inevitably tighten after the reporting is refined, and they will be more cautious in providing them with credit ammunition; second, if regulators identify high-risk asset concentrations in certain NDFIs, they might exert pressure on banks through reverse channels, forcing them to reduce financing support for crypto projects, token issuances, or related funds. The “invisible credit pipeline” provided by shadow finance to the crypto world is gradually being included in a measurable risk landscape by federal regulators through the entry of bank reporting.

Three-Pronged Siege: How Federal Regulation Reshapes the Crypto Landscape

As bank reports begin to expose the credit links between shadow finance and on-chain projects, the other two federal regulatory paths are concurrently tightening. First, Payward submitting the application for Payward National Trust Company to the OCC in May 2026 is effectively positioning its custody business under the national trust license, making its core assets visible to federal bank regulators; second, the Clarity Act was unfrozen in the Senate Banking Committee and is set for markup voting on May 14, creating a federal-level framework for transparency and income distribution for digital asset products with income arrangements under the compromise proposal promoted by Tillis and Alsobrooks; third, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michelle Bowman announced on May 9 the intention to introduce new reporting requirements mandating large banks disclose total assets, net profits, and leverage ratios corresponding to their lending to non-deposit financial institutions. When these three actions converge, they point to a common thread: at the federal level, the focus is no longer solely on "tokens" themselves, but seeks to pull the entire chain of crypto-related businesses back into a landscape open to oversight and intervention, spanning from licensing entry, income rules to disclosure of funding chains.

In such a landscape, licensing, compliance, and banking relationships are reordered. If leading platforms can secure the OCC's national trust company license, they will naturally gain advantages in institutional custody, integrated custody and trading operations, because they can present a federal regulatory "endorsement" to banks, funds, and large clients; issuers of assets complying with the new regulations of the Clarity Act are expected to achieve clearer compliance boundaries in dividend and interest designs, making it easier to access regulated channels for issuing products; while non-deposit financial institutions that already maintain close cooperation with banks and can withstand disclosure pressures become recognized "bridge" under the new reporting regime, continuing to play the role of credit intermediaries between crypto projects and the banking system. In contrast, small to medium platforms and custodians without federal-level permits face rising compliance costs—banks and institutional clients will regard "federal regulatory inclusion" as a hard threshold during due diligence; those unable to meet the standards will be forced to rely on costlier, shorter-term funding sources. Crypto projects dependent on shadow finance for expansion may be labeled as “high-risk assets” under the pressure of bank disclosure obligations, leading to a squeeze on financing channels or forcing them to pay higher risk premiums. In this three-pronged siege, every participant is forced to take a side: either move toward a federally visible, clearly regulated but costlier compliance path, or accept a long-term scenario where gray space is continuously squeezed, and credit and liquidity slowly deplete.

What to Watch Next: License Approval and Congressional Voting

For market participants, the focus now is more on the "process" and "variables" rather than treating the current three lines as established final rules. The application for the national trust company license submitted by Payward to the OCC will undergo a typically lengthy and highly opaque approval chain, from material supplementation, repeated discussions on business plans, to internal risk assessments and coordination within the OCC; currently, there are no publicly disclosed details on what stage PNTC is at, and the timeline itself is part of the uncertainty. On the legislative side, the markup vote in the Senate Banking Committee on May 14 at 10:30 a.m. is merely a step allowing the Clarity Act to "exit the committee"; it does not imply that it has been scheduled for full Senate consideration, nor does it equate to the bill's effectiveness. The Clarity Act still needs to be voted on in the full Senate, go through corresponding procedures in the House of Representatives, and ultimately be sent to the President for signing; each link could potentially be delayed or reversed due to clause disputes or political maneuvering. Meanwhile, the new reporting requirements proposed by Federal Reserve Vice Chair Bowman currently remain at the level of policy signals without forming formal regulatory documents or specific implementation timelines; future technical choices regarding scope, submission frequency, and exemption conditions will truly determine the extent of compliance friction between banks and crypto-related non-deposit institutions. In this new chessboard, the industry needs to focus on when the OCC will release updates on PNTC's review progress, the agenda following the May 14 vote, and whether the Federal Reserve will initiate formal rule-making, rather than prematurely writing existing actions into their commercial landscape as established facts.

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