ICBA Sues OCC Over Crypto National Trust Bank Charters: A Significant Challenge to the OCC’s Chartering Authority

The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) has taken its long-running opposition to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) chartering of cryptocurrency companies to the courts.

On October 2, ICBA filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the OCC and Comptroller Jonathan Gould, challenging the OCC’s authority to charter non-depository, non-fiduciary cryptocurrency companies as national trust banks. The complaint also challenges the OCC’s March 2026 final rule concerning national bank chartering Interpretive Letter 1176 issued in January 2021 and the OCC’s conditional approval of Protego Holdings’ national trust bank charter.

The case, Independent Community Bankers of America v. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, No. 1:26-cv-03441, presents an important question that extends well beyond cryptocurrency: How far does the National Bank Act actually permit the OCC to go in creating limited-purpose national banks?

The OCC’s National Trust Bank Initiative

The dispute centers on a provision of the National Bank Act that was added in 1978. Section 27(a), 12 U.S.C. § 27(a), provides that a national bank is not illegally constituted merely because the Comptroller has limited its operations to those of a “trust company and activities related thereto.”