Coinbase Wins OCC Approval for National Trust Company

Coinbase has received approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish Coinbase National Trust Company, a federally chartered trust company, the exchange announced on Nov. 9, 2026. The news was amplified by jessepollak, Coinbase's Base lead, who reposted the company's announcement.

A federal trust charter is issued by the OCC and allows a firm to operate in a fiduciary capacity under a single national framework rather than through a state-by-state licensing patchwork. Coinbase's announcement frames the entity as a trust company operating with federal oversight.

The approval adds a federally chartered trust company to a business that is already publicly traded on Nasdaq under the ticker COIN and operates the Base Ethereum Layer-2 network. Pollak framed the next step in his own post: "how do we build the first onchain-native trust company on base?"

What to watch

The next markers are which services the trust company offers first and when it begins operating.