Circle National Trust enhances Bitcoin programmability with custody services

Circle now has a federally chartered national trust bank, and it wants to make your Bitcoin do more than sit in a wallet appreciating. Circle National Trust, operating as First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., received final approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on July 10, 2026, and opened its doors for business on July 24.

The bank's primary mission: serve as the regulated custodial backbone for cirBTC, Circle's wrapped Bitcoin product that lets BTC holders access Ethereum-based DeFi protocols without actually parting with their Bitcoin.

Think of Circle National Trust as a vault with a federal badge. It's not a traditional commercial bank. It won't accept deposits or issue loans. Instead, it functions as a qualified custodian, holding native Bitcoin in segregated, bankruptcy-remote accounts on behalf of cirBTC token holders.

cirBTC itself is an ERC-20 token backed 1:1 by native Bitcoin. For every cirBTC in circulation, there's a corresponding BTC locked up under the bank's custody. Holders can redeem their tokens for the underlying Bitcoin on a 1:1 basis.

The transparency layer comes courtesy of Chainlink's Proof of Reserve system, which provides verifiable on-chain attestation that the reserves actually exist. This is a pointed response to the trust problems that have plagued other wrapped Bitcoin products over the years, where users often had to take a custodian's word that the backing assets were really there.