Approval, effectiveness and announcement dates

Coinbase announced on 9 November 2026 that it had received final approval to charter Coinbase National Trust Company. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s application record lists 2 April as the approval date and 6 November as the effective date. Coinbase also identifies 6 November as the date of its final approval. The regulator’s entry categorises the application as a new trust bank under a holding company and assigns proposed charter number 25390. This timeline explains why the announcement and the effective date differ.

Which entity holds the charter

The OCC record names Coinbase National Trust Company as the chartered entity. Coinbase presents the approval as a way to offer institutional custody within a federal regulatory framework. It also describes its earlier New York state trust arrangements. An institution reviewing the change should identify which Coinbase entity signs its contract and holds the relevant assets. The company’s trade name can appear across several services while their agreements, supervisory regimes and operating procedures remain specific to the legal entities involved.

What a custody contract must still explain

Institutional clients use custody agreements to establish who controls assets, who may give instructions and how holdings are recorded. A federal charter provides evidence about the status of the named institution. It does not, on its own, answer whether a specific account uses a particular custody structure, how third parties are involved or how assets would be returned after a service interruption. The material documents for that review remain the account agreement, asset segregation terms and withdrawal procedures for the relevant product.

What to look for during implementation

The announcement is a change in the status of a named trust company, with a date independently visible in the OCC record. Institutions evaluating the trust company can now compare the regulator’s entry with the entity named in their own contracts. Product notices, onboarding documents and any migration instructions will determine how the federal custody offering applies to existing and new clients.

For institutional procurement teams, the useful verification sequence starts with the exact chartered name and proceeds to the custody agreement. That sequence makes it possible to identify which contract terms govern recovery, instruction controls and the return of assets.

The OCC record also specifies the trust company’s proposed headquarters in New York. This gives compliance teams a second identifier to compare with contracting documents when providers within a group have similar names.

Photograph credit

Archival photograph of Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong seated onstage, 16 November 2017. Photograph by Steve Jurvetson. CC BY 2.0. Image unchanged. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Congrats_Brian_Armstrong_on_the_Coinbase_IPO%21_%2851124145378%29.jpg . Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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Researched and published by CryptoGov Editorial Desk. Source publication and effective dates are explained in the article where relevant.