Block said it has applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for permission to form Builders Bank & Trust, N.A., a national trust bank that would not take deposits and would be uninsured. The move would give the company a federally chartered vehicle for parts of its digital-asset business if the application is approved.
According to Block, the proposed bank would provide custodial and fiduciary services for bitcoin and stablecoins. The company also said some of its existing digital-asset activities would be brought under a single federal regulatory framework through the new entity.
A federal trust bank plan
The applicant is Block, the payments company founded by Jack Dorsey. Its filing asks the OCC to authorize Builders Bank & Trust as a national trust bank rather than a traditional deposit-taking institution.
Lee Woolley, the proposed president and chief executive of Builders Bank, said the project would combine Block’s digital-asset experience with Square Financial Services as part of the company’s broader economic-empowerment strategy. The filing does not mean approval has been granted, but it sets out how Block wants to structure custody and related fiduciary services at the federal level.
Why the charter matters
An OCC national trust bank charter is particularly valuable for companies focused on custody. It can place crypto-related operations under federal oversight, which may reduce the complexity of dealing with a patchwork of state rules and give institutional customers more confidence in the regulatory setup.
That matters because many institutions prefer regulated counterparties when holding blockchain-based assets. In some cases, a federal charter can also help a firm pursue qualified-custodian status, making the structure more useful for serving larger or more compliance-sensitive clients.
Part of a wider charter push
Block’s application arrives during a broader increase in bank-charter activity tied to digital assets. The OCC says it received 40 new bank charter applications over roughly the last 18 months, and 23 of them, or 57.5%, involve some form of digital-asset activity.
The agency’s figures cited in the source report say 21 of the 40 applications have been approved and two denied. Comptroller Jonathan Gould said the 23 digital-asset initiatives represent an eightfold increase over the past four years, suggesting crypto-related banking activity is taking a firmer place inside regulated finance.
The recent field includes conditional approvals for applications or conversion requests linked to BitGo, Paxos, Fidelity Digital Assets, Ripple and Circle’s proposed First National Digital Currency Bank. Coinbase also received preliminary conditional approval to establish a national bank on April 2, 2026, while Circle received final approval on July 10 to form Circle National Trust Bank.
Stablecoin policy and the next step
The push for federal charters is unfolding alongside the GENIUS Act, which was enacted on July 18, 2025. In February, the OCC proposed implementing rules covering areas including reserves, redemption, custody, risk management and issuer applications.
The debate also extends beyond U.S. licensing. The BIS has warned that broader use of dollar stablecoins could contribute to what it called digital dollarisation and weaken monetary sovereignty in some countries. The IMF has likewise argued that tokenization could speed up cross-border capital flows and currency substitution.
For now, the immediate confirmed step is the OCC’s review of Block’s application. If Builders Bank & Trust is approved, Block says the entity is prepared to offer bitcoin and stablecoin custody while bringing selected digital-asset operations under one federal framework.
Source: Cryptopolitan