U.S. banking agency gives blockchain bank OpenReserve initial OK to operate
The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted preliminary approval for OpenReserve to operate as a national bank with integrated blockchain settlement. This move reflects a broader regulatory shift toward welcoming crypto-native financial institutions.
Why it matters
This represents a major step in the integration of decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional banking infrastructure under federal oversight.
The OCC has preliminarily approved charters for a swelling array of banks — mostly trust companies — but in this case, OpenReserve said in its Thursday announcement that it chose a full bank charter for its business, conceived as a full-service national bank with embedded onchain settlement.
"We chose the national bank path deliberately," said Dee Choubey, co-founder and CEO of OpenReserve, in a statement. "Supervision, safety and soundness, compliance, and customer confidence are not constraints on what we are building; they are the foundation of it."
The Salt Lake City, Utah-based firm, which still needs a final approval from the OCC for a permanent charter, said it was "built to serve institutional customers across treasury management, stablecoin issuance, and tokenized deposits," and in compliance with the inbound regulations of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act.
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