Senator Elizabeth Warren fired off a formal letter to Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould on May 18, accusing him of "improperly" granting national trust charters to at least nine crypto companies — including Ripple, Coinbase, Circle, Paxos, Fidelity, BitGo, Stripe's Bridge, and Crypto.com — since December 2025. Warren argues the approvals exceed the narrow set of activities permitted under the National Bank Act, calling the recipients "effectively crypto banks that want to evade the fundamental safeguards and obligations that come with being a bank."
The charters stop short of allowing FDIC-insured deposits or traditional commercial lending, but they position these firms to operate stablecoin businesses under the GENIUS Act framework. Warren's core charge is regulatory arbitrage: that the OCC is enabling crypto firms to enjoy bank-like federal legitimacy without bank-like…
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