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Financial Regulation

Block Applies for a National Trust Charter to Custody Bitcoin

Jack Dorsey's payments company joins an OCC queue in which digital asset filings now make up more than half the applications.

Assembled by Claude from 7 sources at 7 outlets · Wednesday, September 9, 2026, Evening edition, 5:14 PM EDT · no human byline

Disclosure. This item was assembled by an AI from the RSS excerpts of the outlets tagged inline. No human wrote or checked it before publication. Feed selection and categories are editorial choices by Teresa Lo. Nothing here is investment advice.

What happened

Block has filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter to custody bitcoin and stablecoins. paymentsdive.comcryptonews.netcryptopolitan.com The Crypto Times reported the same filing as an application for a digital asset trust bank. cryptotimes.io The company is the payments business founded by Jack Dorsey. cryptopolitan.comcrypto.news

The regulator has been signalling openness. "America and the OCC are once again open for business," Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said. paymentsdive.com Gould has put the current queue at 40 charter applications filed, of which 23 involve digital assets, and said those 23 digital asset initiatives represent an eightfold increase over the past four years. cryptonews.netcryptopolitan.com

Why it matters to investors

A national trust charter would place crypto custody inside the federal bank regulatory perimeter rather than beside it. paymentsdive.comcryptonews.net That is the structural point: the same activity, supervised by a bank regulator, with the examination and oversight that follow from a federal charter. cryptopolitan.comcryptotimes.io For a payments company, it also removes a dependency on third-party custodians for the assets it already handles. cryptopolitan.comcryptonews.net

Not everyone in Congress is comfortable with the pace. In a May letter to Gould, Senator Elizabeth Warren accused the regulator of approving at least nine national trust charters, a criticism aimed at the approvals themselves rather than any single applicant. cryptotimes.io World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture backed by President Trump's family, received preliminary conditional approval in August to establish World Liberty Trust Company. crypto.newsincrypted.com That approval is part of what has drawn the scrutiny to the charter process. cryptotimes.ioincrypted.com

What to watch

The rulemaking calendar runs alongside the charter queue. The FDIC is on track to issue its stablecoin rulemaking by year's end, and Gould has said the OCC plans to have a final rule by November. bankingjournal.aba.com

Two questions follow from that sequence. The first is whether Block's application is decided before or after the final rule lands, which determines the standard it is judged against. paymentsdive.combankingjournal.aba.com The second is whether the eightfold rise in digital asset filings continues once the rules are written, or whether the present queue reflects firms trying to get in ahead of them. cryptopolitan.comcryptonews.net A third question sits underneath both: whether Warren's objection to the approval rate gains any traction while the comptroller is publicly advertising that the agency is open for business. cryptotimes.iopaymentsdive.com

The composition of the queue is the detail worth carrying forward. With 23 of 40 applications involving digital assets, the charter pipeline is now majority crypto by count, which is a change in what a national trust charter is typically used for. cryptonews.netcryptopolitan.com Block's filing is specific about the purpose, naming bitcoin and stablecoin custody rather than a general trust business. cryptopolitan.comcryptonews.net That specificity is what makes it a test case for the rest of the queue. paymentsdive.comcryptotimes.io

Sources

  1. paymentsdive.com: Block seeks OCC bank charter | Payments Dive (2026-09-09)
  2. cryptopolitan.com: Jack Dorsey's Block seeks OCC charter for bitcoin and stablecoin custody - Cryptopolitan (2026-09-09)
  3. cryptotimes.io: Block Files OCC Application for Digital Asset Trust Bank - The Crypto Times (2026-09-09)
  4. cryptonews.net: Block applies for national trust bank charter to custody bitcoin and stablecoins - Cryptonews.net (2026-09-09)
  5. incrypted.com: Jack Dorsey's Block Has Filed an Application to Establish a National Trust Bank - Incrypted (2026-09-09)
  6. crypto.news: Jack Dorsey's Block files OCC application for Bitcoin and stablecoin custody bank (2026-09-09)
  7. bankingjournal.aba.com: Hill: FDIC on track to issue stablecoin rulemaking by year's end | ABA Banking Journal (2026-09-09)