Jack Dorsey's Block Applies for Bank Charter to Custody Bitcoin

In brief

• Block filed with the OCC on September 4 to charter Builders Bank & Trust, an uninsured national trust bank.
• It would custody Bitcoin and other digital assets and settle stablecoins, taking no deposits and making no loans.
• Block moved about $10.7 billion in Bitcoin volume last year across more than 50 state licenses.

Block has applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter, the payments company behind Square and Cash App said on Tuesday.

Builders Bank & Trust would be uninsured and non-depository, taking no deposits and making no loans. Its business would be custody of Bitcoin and other digital assets, executing customer buy and sell orders on a riskless principal basis, and stablecoin settlement.

Block has run digital asset services for about eight years under more than 50 state money transmitter and virtual currency licenses, the application says, handling around $10.7 billion in Bitcoin transaction volume in 2025 and serving about two million monthly crypto users through Cash App by the second quarter. A federal charter, Block says, would let it support those activities "through a consistent national framework as the business scales."