Federal regulators are creating more ways for crypto companies to operate under US rules, while congressional investigators seek records related to those decisions. Lawmakers want to know how regulators justified new trust charters, how crypto companies managed compliance and what dealings they had with people connected to President Donald Trump’s administration.
On Nov. 9, Coinbase announced that its national trust company had received final approval to open. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval in April. Coinbase said the charter gives its custody business a consistent federal framework.
Lawmakers had been questioning how federal regulators were using their existing authority to broaden crypto companies’ reach. In a May 18 letter to the OCC, Sen. Elizabeth Warren challenged at least nine crypto trust-charter approvals, including Coinbase’s earlier conditional approval. She requested the applications, the legal analyses supporting the approvals and any related communications between OCC officials and the White House or Trump family.
Four days before Coinbase’s announcement, Sen. Richard Blumenthal renewed his requests for records from Binance, Tether and two Trump-linked ventures. He gave them until Jan. 4, 2027, to voluntarily provide the requested records and warned that his subcommittee could take other steps to obtain them.
Sign up for the Daybreak Newsletter to read the full report.
