Jack Dorsey’s payments company Block has applied to establish a federally regulated trust bank dedicated to custody of bitcoin and stablecoins, marking one of the most aggressive moves yet by a mainstream fintech into regulated digital asset infrastructure.
In an announcement Tuesday, Block said it submitted an application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to create Builders Bank & Trust, an uninsured national trust bank. If approved, the institution would operate under direct OCC supervision and provide custody and related fiduciary services for digital assets — a national framework Block says its custody business needs as it scales.
Not your typical bank
The proposed institution would be deliberately narrow in scope: unlike a commercial bank, Builders Bank would not accept deposits and would not make loans. That separation is significant. By design, it removes the two activities that expose traditional banks to runs and credit risk, leaving a purpose-built custodial entity whose core function is safeguarding bitcoin and stablecoin holdings for institutional and eventually retail clients.
Block has named Lee Woolley, the company’s digital asset strategy lead, as the proposed president and chief executive of the new bank. Woolley said the institution would draw on Block’s existing digital asset operations as well as the company’s experience operating Square Financial Services, Block’s Utah-based industrial bank — giving the firm a track record of running a regulated financial entity that many crypto-native applicants lack.
A crowded race to federal charters
Block’s filing lands amid a land rush for national trust charters. Ripple has received conditional approval from the OCC for its own national trust bank, while Circle and BitGo have both secured final approval — BitGo now markets itself as the first public, federally chartered digital asset infrastructure company. Kraken’s parent Payward and crypto infrastructure provider Zerohash have also submitted applications.
What distinguishes Block from that field is scale and reach. The company processes payments for millions of merchants through Square, operates the Cash App consumer platform, and has spent years building self-custody bitcoin tools through its Spiral and Proto teams. A federally chartered custody bank would let Block weld those pieces together under a single national regulatory umbrella, rather than stitching together state-by-state licenses.
Why custody infrastructure is the battleground
The rush toward trust charters reflects where the industry sees the money flowing. Spot bitcoin ETFs turned regulated custody into a multi-billion-dollar business, and the stablecoin market’s growth has made reserve management and token custody core infrastructure rather than niche services. Institutions allocating to digital assets increasingly demand custodians that sit inside the federal regulatory perimeter — chartered, examined, and answerable to the OCC rather than to a patchwork of state regimes.
For stablecoins specifically, custody architecture is becoming table stakes. Issuers and corporate holders need auditable, bankruptcy-remote structures for reserves, and a national trust charter provides a ready-made legal wrapper for exactly that kind of fiduciary arrangement.
The Dorsey factor
The application also underscores Jack Dorsey’s long-running bitcoin conviction. Block has steadily accumulated bitcoin on its balance sheet, integrated bitcoin payouts into Cash App, and invested in mining hardware development. The OCC filing, submitted just weeks after Block cut 40 percent of its staff as part of a Dorsey-led reorganization around AI-integrated operations, signals that digital asset custody is one of the businesses the leaner company intends to build its future on.
Approval is not guaranteed, and the OCC has faced pressure from traditional banking groups to move slowly on crypto trust charters. But the direction of travel is clear: the same regulator that once presided over crypto’s de-banking is now processing a queue of applications from the industry’s biggest names.
It would also mark a milestone for the trust charter model itself. The OCC’s early experiments with fintech charters were mired in litigation and skepticism from state regulators and banking lobbyists. A household-name payments company voluntarily seeking that supervision — rather than fighting it — signals how much the industry’s regulatory posture has changed in two years, and how valuable federal credentials have become as competitive moats in digital asset services.
If Builders Bank & Trust clears the hurdle, Block would join a small group of firms holding the federal credentials increasingly viewed as the price of admission for institutional digital asset custody in the United States — and bitcoin, trading near 78,300 USD at the time of writing, would gain another deep-pocketed, federally supervised custodian.
A custody bank with zero lending risk is exactly what institutional allocators kept asking for. If Woolley gets OCC approval, every fintech with a crypto desk files similar paperwork within a year.
the unbank yourself guy now applying for a trust bank charter. love the irony, still probably the right move for custody at scale
No deposits, no loans, pure custody under OCC supervision. That narrow scope is the smartest part of this filing. Dorsey sidesteps everything that killed other crypto bank attempts.
Question is whether OCC approves it before the next election cycle shifts the mood again. Applications like this can sit in limbo for 18 months easily.
18 months is the optimistic read. at least block has the balance sheet to wait out OCC limbo, most fintechs filing this would die on the vine
18 months is optimistic, anchorage and protego spent years on smaller asks. at least this filing has a payments company balance sheet behind it
Direct OCC supervision for Builders Bank is what institutional allocators have been waiting for. Block moving first here puts real pressure on every other custodian.
^ agreed, though uninsured national trust bank means no FDIC backstop. fine for bitcoin, just know what you are signing up for
for pure bitcoin custody the no fdic thing is almost a feature. you know exactly what you own, no mushy claim on a bank balance sheet
Custodying bitcoin and stablecoins under a national trust charter is the exact roadmap every fintech has been sketching since the OCC guidance fight. Block just actually filed the paperwork. Respect.
No deposits, no loans, no runs. Woolley is running a narrow bank the way the chicago plan crowd always dreamed of. Strange to see it from Block of all companies.
chicago plan comparison is spot on. no deposits, no loans, nothing to run on. the narrow bank crowd dreamed about this charter for decades and a bitcoin payments company just filed it
chicago plan maxi confirmed lmao. woolley basically filed the 1930s pamphlet as an occ application, no deposits no loans no runs
block getting an occ charter application in before most crypto native banks even finished paperwork is funny. dorsey plays the longest game in fintech
Builders Bank custodying stablecoins too is the quiet part. the payments side of Block needs those rails way more than the bitcoin side does
Exactly. Square merchants settling in stablecoins is the volume play. Bitcoin custody gets the headlines but the payments rails are why Block actually needs this charter.
square sellers getting stablecoin settlement is the endgame here. the bitcoin custody angle is just what gets the clicks
square merchants already push btc volume through cash app blocks, this is dorsey verticalizing the whole custody pipe
agreed on the stablecoin rails point. cash app settlement volume alone justifies the custody license, the bitcoin side is the marketing