Bitcoin secured inside an institutional custody vault

Block Seeks Federal Trust Charter for Bitcoin and Stablecoin Custody

By Isaac • September 9, 2026 7:24 am • Comments

Block is asking federal regulators for permission to build a national trust bank around one of the hardest problems in institutional crypto: custody.

The company has submitted an application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish Builders Bank & Trust, N.A. If approved, the new entity would hold Bitcoin and stablecoins under one federal supervisory framework.

That distinction matters. Builders Bank would not be a conventional retail bank.

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It would be uninsured, would not take deposits, and would not make loans. Its proposed role is narrower: custody and related fiduciary services for digital assets.

In the company announcement carried by Business Wire, Block said an OCC charter would let it expand custody services within a consistent national framework. Lee Woolley, Block’s digital asset strategy lead, is slated to serve as the proposed bank’s president and CEO.

The application is not an approval. Builders Bank cannot operate as described unless the OCC grants the charter, and the final scope could be shaped by conditions imposed during the review.

The proposed structure also shows where major crypto companies increasingly see the next competitive line. The product goes beyond a wallet or software layer.

It is regulated infrastructure designed to make digital assets easier for institutions to hold without stitching together different state regimes.

Cointelegraph notes that Block would join a growing group of crypto and financial-technology firms pursuing national trust charters. Ripple received conditional approval for its trust-bank plan, while Circle and BitGo received final approval for theirs.

Other applicants include Kraken parent Payward and crypto infrastructure company Zerohash. The pattern shows that federal custody charters are moving from an industry experiment toward a serious infrastructure race.

Block already operates across payments, Bitcoin products, hardware, and banking through businesses including Square, Cash App, Bitkey, Proto, and Square Financial Services. A national trust bank would give the company a dedicated regulated home for custody instead of forcing that function into a conventional deposit-taking model.

Block said Builders Bank would draw on its digital-asset experience and its history operating Square Financial Services, an existing industrial bank. That does not eliminate the operational and compliance burden.

It does give the application more substance than a crypto company adding the word “bank” to a product roadmap.

The OCC maintains a public list of digital-asset licensing applications and says charter applicants remain subject to its review process. The next thing to watch is what activities regulators ultimately allow and what conditions accompany any approval.

For Bitcoin, the bigger signal is institutional. Custody is becoming a regulated banking function in its own right, and Block wants to own more of that stack.

Builders Bank is still only a proposal, but the application makes the company’s direction unusually clear.

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