Digital Chamber pushes back on Warren’s crypto charter attack, backs OCC
Leading crypto advocacy group, The Digital Chamber, has told the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency(OCC) to hold its ground on the national trust bank charters it has granted to crypto firms, rejecting Senator Elizabeth Warren’s characterisation of the approvals as legally improper and potentially dangerous to the financial system.
In a letter sent Tuesday to Comptroller Jonathan Gould, the industry group representing more than 250 crypto-related entities said Warren got it wrong in her May 18 letter to the OCC, which accused the agency of illegally approving at least nine crypto trust charters in a manner that flouts the National Bank Act and threatens the safety of the US banking system.
“The characterization of these approvals as ‘apparent violations’ of the National Bank Act misreads both the statute and the OCC’s longstanding charter authority,” said TDC CEO Cody Carbone in the letter.
Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, named Ripple, Circle, Paxos, Fidelity Digital Asset Services, BitGo, Crypto.com’s Foris DAX, Stripe’s Bridge, Protego, and Coinbase among the firms she believes received charters improperly since December 2025.
She argued those companies are “effectively crypto banks that want to evade the fundamental safeguards and obligations that come with being a bank” and set a June 1 deadline for the OCC to produce all applications, legal analyses, and any communications with President Trump or his family connected to the approvals.
Warren also argued that the firms appear to have organized themselves in response to the GENIUS Act, a law passed last summer aimed at regulating stablecoins, and said that legislation does not alter the existing framework established by the National Bank Act.
The Digital Chamber countered that each firm named in Warren’s letter went through a rigorous OCC review process. “Each of the companies named in Senator Warren’s letter underwent a rigorous OCC review process, met all applicable statutory and regulatory requirements, and were granted charters or conditional approval for charters only upon demonstrating that their proposed activities fall within permissible activities for national trust banks,” the letter reads.
Further, the group also argued that federal oversight through national trust charters provides stronger consumer protections than state-level licenses, framing the OCC’s charter authority as a feature rather than a loophole.
In 2025, the OCC had conditionally approved digital asset firms Ripple, Circle, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos for national trust bank status. Final approval would allow those firms to hold customer assets but would not permit them to accept cash deposits or extend loans.
Coinbase National Trust Company and Circle-affiliated entities are among those that have also sought federal charter status as crypto firms increasingly look to operate under a nationally recognized regulatory framework.
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