Circle Wins Federal Trust-Bank Charter, Pulling USDC Reserves Toward U.S. Oversight

Circle, the issuer of USD Coin (USDC), received final approval on July 10 from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a national trust bank, to be called Circle National Trust. The company described the charter as a way to place USDC reserves and custody under federal supervision, and its shares rose sharply on the news.

The bank will begin with fiduciary custody of digital assets for Circle and its affiliates, according to the company's own announcement, with direct custody for a limited set of institutions to follow depending on demand. Management said administration of the USDC Reserve, the pool of cash and short-dated Treasuries that backs the token, is a planned future capability rather than a day-one function. Circle first applied in June 2025 and won conditional approval in December.

USDC circulates at roughly $73.5 billion, the second-largest dollar stablecoin behind Tether's USDT at about $184 billion, per DeFiLlama. Bringing reserve management inside a federally chartered trust removes a layer of third-party bank dependence that has repeatedly threatened stablecoin pegs, most visibly when USDC briefly lost its dollar peg during the March 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

The move arrives as the GENIUS Act framework forces regulators to define which issuers can operate without legal ambiguity inside the U.S. system, with a July 18 milestone approaching. A national charter positions Circle as one of the clearly permitted issuers, and it follows Watcher Guru's report of the approval as one of several crypto firms pursuing federal banking status.