The Independent Community Bankers of America has asked a federal court to vacate the legal framework the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has used to issue national trust bank charters to cryptocurrency companies.
The complaint filed October 2 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenges the OCC’s March 2026 chartering rule, a 2021 interpretive letter and the agency’s conditional approval of Protego Trust Company. ICBA argues that the National Bank Act allows non-depository national trust banks to perform fiduciary activities, but does not authorize limited-purpose banks whose crypto custody, trading or lending businesses are not principally fiduciary. icba.org
The trade group is asking for declaratory and injunctive relief under the Administrative Procedure Act. A complaint presents one party’s allegations, not a judicial finding, and the OCC has not yet filed its response.
A Direct Attack on the Charter Path
The case targets more than one applicant. ICBA says the OCC has approved or conditionally approved 21 national trust banks under the challenged framework, at least 13 of them crypto companies. The filing names firms such as Protego and describes a wider class of digital-asset businesses using federal trust charters to operate nationally without taking conventional deposits. icba.org
That distinction controls much of the dispute. Depository banks generally face Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation assessments, Community Reinvestment Act obligations and other capital, liquidity and supervisory requirements. A national trust bank that does not accept insured deposits has a different business model and is not automatically subject to every rule applied to a full-service commercial bank.
ICBA says the difference has become an unlawful competitive advantage. The complaint alleges that two unnamed member banks have already lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in business to crypto firms with conditional national trust charters. Those are plaintiff allegations that the court will test through standing, statutory interpretation and the administrative record.
Crypto trust banks and community banks are not perfect substitutes. Many digital-asset trusts concentrate on custody, asset administration and stablecoin infrastructure rather than checking accounts and commercial lending. The lawsuit nevertheless places the legality of their federal entry route before a court at a time when the OCC has been expanding approvals.
What the Court Could Change
If ICBA ultimately succeeds, the OCC could be required to narrow or rewrite its rule, reconsider specific approvals, or limit non-depository national trust banks to activities a court recognizes as fiduciary. The immediate filing does not cancel existing charters or stop approved institutions from operating.
A decision favoring the OCC would strengthen the agency’s position that the National Bank Act permits a modern national trust charter for custody and related digital-asset services. It would also leave the banking industry to continue the fight through Congress, future rulemaking or challenges to individual charter approvals.
The litigation may proceed through threshold disputes before reaching the merits. The government can contest ICBA’s standing, the timeliness of parts of the challenge, whether the disputed actions are reviewable final agency actions and the correct interpretation of the 1978 amendment at the center of the case.
TOKEN RECON ASSESSMENT
This lawsuit converts the bank industry’s policy resistance into a direct legal challenge to one of crypto’s most valuable federal access routes. The filing proves that the charter framework is under attack, not that existing approvals are invalid. The decisive signals will be the OCC’s response, any request for preliminary relief and the court’s treatment of ICBA’s standing. Until a court issues an order, chartered and conditionally approved crypto trusts retain their current legal status.
