The legal challenge against the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has intensified with Nomura's digital asset subsidiary Laser Digital securing conditional approval for a national trust bank charter. According to Reuters, the move allows Laser Digital to hold and administer tokenized, digital and conventional assets in the U.S. under federal supervision upon receiving full sign-off from the OCC. Full approval is contingent on the firm satisfying certain conditions, including minimum capital requirements, with Laser Digital not intending to take deposits or provide lending services. The latest approval brings the total number of crypto firms with conditional approvals to at least 15 applications submitted by digital asset-related firms since the start of 2025, as reported by S&P Global.
The legal challenge was triggered by the OCC's December 12 batch of conditional approvals for Ripple, Circle, Paxos, BitGo, and Fidelity Digital Assets - the first mass grant of federal charters to crypto firms in history. As reported, February brought conditionals for Crypto.com, Bridge, and Stripe, bringing the total to eleven companies within approximately 83 days. The banks argue that these firms are not meaningfully trust companies but are using the trust wrapper to obtain valuable banking powers without the burdens of deposit insurance, capital requirements, and community reinvestment obligations that define full-service banks. The April 1 rule change expanded the description of permissible activities from fiduciary activities to trust company operations and related activities, which critics argue blesses substantial non-fiduary business within a limited-purpose charter.
Twenty state attorneys general have joined forces to oppose two major fintech acquisitions, arguing that allowing high-cost lenders to acquire federally regulated banks would undermine consumer protections. Led by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, the coalition sent a letter to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Federal Reserve urging rejection of Opportunity Financial's $130 million acquisition of an Arizona bank and Enova International's $369 million purchase of Grasshopper Bank. The attorneys general criticized regulators for granting trust charters to cryptocurrency firms, arguing that expanding access to federal banking privileges could 'amplify risk and instability to the financial system' while encouraging what they described as regulatory arbitrage.
According to the analysis, the retained-counsel posture achieves several strategic objectives without filing a lawsuit. The threat pressures the OCC to slow approvals and attach heavier conditions, clouds every pending application, and costs nothing in legal fees. The banks hold genuine procedural advantages, having sued a banking regulator before and won concessions in the Federal Reserve's stress-testing framework litigation in late 2024. A loss would ratify the charter pathway with precedent, converting today's reversible policy into settled law, while discovery cuts both ways in a fight where JPMorgan operates its own digital-asset platform. The missing GENIUS Act rules define stablecoin reserve custody and could legitimize the OCC's approach or provide challengers with statutory text to litigate against.
The trust charter serves as the structural foundation of crypto's institutional strategy, enabling stablecoin issuers to hold GENIUS Act reserves, custodians to serve ETFs, and firms like Ripple to bolt federal entities onto global operations. According to the analysis, four broad paths remain: the BPI sues with years of litigation, the OCC completes final approvals quickly, the agency quietly narrows conditions, or Congress settles the definition legislatively inside a market-structure bill. The clarity around crypto legislation from policies such as the GENIUS Act has helped boost institutional confidence in stablecoins and tokenized assets by moving the U.S. closer to a formal regulatory framework. The current regulatory debate highlights how U.S. banking supervisors balance financial innovation, competition and consumer protection as fintech firms continue seeking greater access to the federal banking system.
