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ZEROBASE (@zerobasezk)
Jack Dorsey’s Block has applied to the OCC to form Builders Bank & Trust, an uninsured national trust bank that would custody Bitcoin, stablecoins, and other digital assets under one federal framework. The bank would offer custody and fiduciary services but would not take deposits or make loans. Approval would put activities Block already runs under OCC supervision and replace more than fifty state money-transmitter licenses with a single national charter. Lee Woolley, Block’s digital asset strategy lead and a former Northern Trust, BNY Mellon, and credit-union executive, would run the bank from a planned Sioux Falls headquarters. Block already self-custodies much of its Bitcoin, so the filing is mainly about federal preemption and a scalable wrapper as volumes grow. The move fits a wider charter wave. In December 2025 the OCC gave simultaneous conditional approvals to Circle, Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos. Circle later won final approval. Coinbase received preliminary conditional approval in April 2026, and http://Crypto.com, Stripe’s Bridge, and others have advanced. The OCC has processed a large number of de novo filings and said legally permissible digital-asset firms should have a path into the national banking system. These charters do not create full commercial banks. They do not confer deposits, lending, or FDIC insurance. They do provide nationwide consistency, one federal supervisor, and a clearer claim to qualified-custodian status. That wave sits inside a larger reset. The GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025, created the first federal rules for payment stablecoins: one-to-one high-quality reserves, licensed issuers, redemption rights, and AML standards. Implementing rules missed the July 2026 deadline; the OCC has pointed to November, with a statutory fallback in January 2027. The broader CLARITY Act, which would assign SEC and CFTC roles and classify assets more clearly, passed the House and Senate Banking but has stalled on the Senate floor amid calendar pressure and fights over DeFi, ethics rules, and competing bills. If it fails, classification stays largely with agencies rather than statute. Block’s own products make the timing logical. Cash App already supports Bitcoin buying, selling, and transfers. Square merchants can accept Bitcoin over Lightning. The company has pushed Bitkey self-custody, Proof of Reserves, and tools that convert sales into Bitcoin. Dorsey has long favored Bitcoin over stablecoins, yet Cash App now handles stablecoin transfers and the bank application covers them too. A federal charter would let those products scale under one supervisor. The implication is that crypto custody is being pulled into the existing banking system. That can raise institutional comfort and cut licensing friction, but it also puts more activity under OCC examination. Traditional banks have flagged risks around limited-purpose charters and illicit finance. Approval is not guaranteed, and these trust banks still need partner institutions for cash rails. Block’s bid is both operational and strategic: lock in a federal custody platform while the rules are still being written and peers are already inside the OCC tent.