Block Seeks an OCC Trust Charter to Replace 50-Plus State Licenses

Block wants a federal bank charter for the part of its business that holds bitcoin. The company has applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to charter Builders Bank and Trust, N.A., an uninsured national trust bank that would custody bitcoin, stablecoins and other digital assets. It would take no deposits and make no loans. The filing became public on Wednesday. Block has run its crypto business for years under more than 50 state licenses, and a charter would put one federal supervisor in place of that patchwork.

Three filing dates, and they do not agree

The date is the first thing that does not settle. Decrypt puts the filing on 4 September. TFTC and The Defiant both say 8 September. Cointelegraph and CryptoTimes date it "Tuesday, September 9", while American Banker writes 9 September and describes the announcement as coming after Tuesday's market close. The 8th was the Tuesday. So the accounts naming a weekday attach it to the wrong date, and we could not establish which filing date supersedes the others. The OCC's own digital-asset application table had not been refreshed past its 19 August cutoff when The Defiant checked it.

A bank that holds and does not lend

A national trust bank is a narrow thing. It keeps assets for customers as a fiduciary, legally bound to act in their interest, and skips the deposit-and-loan business that defines an ordinary bank. Builders Bank would carry no federal deposit insurance, because it takes no deposits, and Decrypt reports it would run without branches. Decrypt is also alone in listing two further functions: filling customer buy and sell orders on a riskless principal basis, and settling stablecoins. Lee Woolley, who leads digital asset strategy at Block, is the proposed president and chief executive, and American Banker and CryptoTimes trace his career through Northern Trust, BNY Mellon and the Treasury Department Federal Credit Union. Decrypt places the bank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and reports that all five proposed directors live outside the state, with Block asking the OCC to waive its residency rule.

"We look forward to working with the OCC as we pursue a charter designed to support the secure custody of assets for Block and its customers," Woolley said, in remarks TFTC carried.

The cost of fifty-odd licenses

The commercial logic is consolidation. Block has spent roughly eight years under more than 50 state money transmitter and virtual currency licenses, each with its own examinations and renewal calendar. The company told the OCC a charter would give it "a consistent national framework as the business expands", in the wording Cointelegraph quotes, and TFTC calls what would disappear "per-state compliance drag". No account puts a dollar figure on that drag. Decrypt supplies the scale a charter would cover: about $10.7 billion in bitcoin transaction volume during 2025, and roughly 2 million monthly crypto customers on Cash App as of the second quarter. Both figures come from Decrypt alone.

The queue at the OCC

Block joins a line that has been forming for a year. Circle won final approval for a national trust bank in July, and the agency has since handed conditional clearances to exchanges, custodians and payment firms. Beyond Circle the accounts stop matching. Decrypt groups Circle with Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paxos and Coinbase as holding conditional or preliminary approvals; Cointelegraph puts Circle and BitGo at final and Ripple at conditional. Those readings do not reconcile, so the standing of every name except Circle is unsettled. Clearance is not automatic either. Decrypt alone reports the OCC turned down Wise National Trust in July, and the agency attached a $210 million capital condition to one recent approval.

American Banker says the OCC aims to decide charter applications within 120 days, and that Block's had not been posted for public comment; both details come from that outlet alone. Neither the capital Block intends to put behind the bank nor a target opening date appears anywhere in the reporting. Until the OCC publishes the file, the terms are Block's description of them.