OCC Clears Ripple National Trust Bank to Hold RLUSD Reserves

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted final approval on Monday for Ripple National Trust Bank, closing a chartering process that opened with an application in July 2025. The charter lets the bank manage the segregated reserves behind RLUSD, Ripple's dollar stablecoin, and act as collateral trustee of those reserves for the people holding the token. It also covers fiduciary custody of digital assets for corporate clients. Ripple announced the approval in a press release the same day. Issuance of RLUSD does not move, and stays with Standard Custody & Trust Company, the New York-regulated unit that mints the token today.

What the charter covers

A national trust bank is a federally chartered institution limited to fiduciary work. It takes no deposits and writes no loans, and Cointelegraph, citing the OCC, noted early on Tuesday that most such banks carry no federal deposit insurance either. Crypto Briefing put the same limit more plainly, saying operations are confined to fiduciary activities. So the change here is supervisory. RLUSD's reserves come under a federal regulator while the token itself continues to be issued under New York rules, which leaves two authorities sitting over one product.

Ripple put RLUSD's market capitalisation at $2.5 billion and dated the token's launch to December 2024. CoinDesk carried the same figure a few hours later and placed RLUSD inside the 50 largest stablecoins. The company says BNY holds most of the reserves as primary custodian, and that it publishes monthly third-party attestations covering circulating supply and backing. Crypto Briefing reported a proposed charter number of 25364 and a New York base for the bank; no other account read here mentions either detail.

Ten months between two approvals

Conditional approval came on 12 December 2025. The final grant followed on 26 October 2026, a little over ten months later. Crypto Briefing wrote that full authorisation had been expected by March 2026 and offered no explanation for the gap, and that account stands alone. Neither Ripple nor the regulator addressed the timing in anything this desk read. Ripple did say it will keep working with the OCC, New York's department of financial services and other regulators as the United States implements the GENIUS Act framework for stablecoins.

Three versions of one sentence

The press release quotes chief executive Brad Garlinghouse twice, and the first line is the one every outlet picked up.

"For years, we've said crypto and banks work better together," Garlinghouse said. "Final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank is what that looks like in practice."

The secondhand accounts differ. The Block rendered the same thought from his post on X as "We've always said crypto and banks work better together." Cointelegraph rendered it as "We've always said crypto and banks work better together — this is what that looks like." Three wordings, one idea, and they do not reconcile. The press release is the version read directly here, so it is the version quoted.

Who else holds a charter

Circle received final OCC approval in July, according to The Block and Cointelegraph. The two outlets split on BitGo. The Block says BitGo received its approval in December 2025, while Crypto Briefing lists the custodian among the conditional approvals granted that month, alongside Circle and Paxos. Those accounts do not reconcile, and we could not establish which stage BitGo has reached. Coinbase is still at the conditional stage, Cointelegraph said, after a preliminary approval in April.

The instrument itself is contested. Community banks have sued the OCC to vacate the rule the agency uses to charter trust institutions of this kind, and that case was filed before Monday's grant. Ripple has not said when its bank opens, who will run it, or what it will charge. Until it opens, the reserves stay where they are and the second supervisor is a document rather than a practice.