← The Global Intelligence Brief
3 sources
Morning Edition · Tuesday, October 27, 2026Published at 1:06 AM EDT · New York
Ripple receives final approval for a US national trust bank as bitcoin trades near $80,000
Bitcoin fell about 1% before the Fed decision, and Tom Lee's Bitmine chose share buybacks over ether purchases as crypto prices declined.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has approved Ripple National Trust Bank, Ripple's chief executive Brad Garlinghouse announced on X. The final approval follows the OCC's conditional approval in December 2025. Reports at the time said a national trust charter allows federally supervised digital-asset custody but does not permit deposit-taking or lending.
Prices moved the other way. Bitcoin traded near $80,100, down about 1% over 24 hours, as traders waited for the Federal Reserve. Gold fell only 0.2% over the same period and held above $4,000.
Corporate holders are adjusting. Bitmine, the ether treasury company chaired by Tom Lee, spent $46 million buying back its own shares instead of buying more ether. Lee said crypto had held up better than artificial intelligence (AI) stocks during the recent market pullback. A treasury company that prefers buybacks is signaling that its shares trade below the value of its holdings, which reduces one source of steady demand for the underlying tokens.
Retail custody is also shifting. Blink Wallet began charging $1 a month on custodial accounts inactive for 12 months. Bitcoin Magazine says the fee is pushing users toward wallets they control themselves.
Part of a tracked trend
Crypto Moves Inside the Federal Banking Perimeter
US regulators keep bringing crypto firms under federal banking charters, which ties digital assets more closely to dollar-system supervision and surveillance while increasing institutional access.
What this means
The OCC charter places a major crypto firm inside the federal banking perimeter, with supervision, reporting and know-your-customer obligations attached. That brings institutional custody business and stablecoin settlement closer to the dollar system. Federal integration makes crypto more usable for regulated money and more visible to the state, and it moves the asset further from the censorship-resistant property that originally attracted holders. The price action supports the desk's tracked view that bitcoin trades with liquidity-sensitive assets: it fell five times as much as gold on the same Fed expectations. The precedent is the 2024 launch of US spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which increased institutional access and also increased bitcoin's correlation with US equities. The likelier outcome is more federal trust charters for crypto custodians over the coming months under the current regulatory approach, while bitcoin keeps following US rate expectations. If the Fed signals a December increase on Wednesday, expect bitcoin to underperform gold again. A bitcoin rally on a hawkish Fed day would contradict that read.
What to watch
- Bitcoin's move relative to gold after Wednesday's Fed statement. Divergence in the same direction as today would confirm it trades as a risk asset, not as a monetary hedge.
- Further OCC charter approvals for crypto firms. A series of approvals would show that crypto custody is becoming part of the regulated US banking system.
- Buyback announcements by other crypto treasury companies. More buybacks instead of token purchases would remove a source of demand that supported prices earlier in the cycle.
Observations to monitor, not financial advice.
Synthesized from: CoinDesk · CoinDesk · Bitcoin Magazine
Townsquare
Start a discussion in Townsquare.
More from this edition
- Brazil's Ibovespa falls 13.9% and the real drops 8.2% after Lula wins a fourth term
- Federal Reserve opens a two-day meeting with markets pricing a December rate increase
- Saudi, Pakistani and Turkish security chiefs press Iran on Hormuz after a record month of tanker attacks
- European gas reaches a four-year high as storage runs below normal before winter
- Israelis vote with polls showing neither Netanyahu's bloc nor Eisenkot's bloc reaching a majority
- Pakistan raises its policy rate to 12% as the oil shock reaches central banks and airlines
- Former Bank of Japan governor Kuroda backs more rate increases as services inflation reaches 3.7%
Comments
0No comments yet.