The Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC in federal court in Washington on Oct. 2, two weeks after the agency approved Agora National Trust Bank, Catena Trust Bank and Bastion Platforms.

American Banker reported that the complaint asked the court to vacate the OCC's national trust bank rule and Interpretive Letter 1176. It argued the agency exceeded its authority by widening limited-purpose trust charters for fintech and crypto firms.

ICBA says the OCC has approved or conditionally approved 21 trust banks , 13 of them tied to crypto.

Banking groups objected company by company, and the OCC kept approving . Five crypto-linked national trust applications, including BitGo , Fidelity Digital Assets, First National Digital Currency Bank, Paxos and Ripple -linked applicants, won decisions in December 2025.

Bridge, National Digital Trust and Foris DAX, the parent of Crypto.com , followed in February, Coinbase in April and Laser Digital in May. Agora, Catena and Bastion arrived Sept. 18 , and several of these approvals are conditional or preliminary.

The OCC finalized its national trust bank rule in February, effective April 1. It replaced the phrase “fiduciary activities” with the statute's broader wording, “the operations of a trust company and activities related thereto.”

The OCC says the language leaves its chartering authority intact and that national trust banks have long performed some nonfiduciary work, including custody. It points to 12 U.S.C. 24(Seventh) as authority for nonfiduciary custody and related activities.

ICBA's complaint reads the same rule as stretching a limited-purpose trust charter to cover non-depository, non-fiduciary crypto businesses under a lighter framework than insured banks face.

From an on-chain analytics and liquidity distribution perspective, developments around "Bankers sue to overturn OCC trust-bank rule used by crypto firms" signal important shifts in network participation. Market participants observe that derivative funding metrics, exchange reserve telemetry, and smart contract protocol interactions reflect cautious accumulation alongside disciplined risk hedging across the sector.

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