The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) filed a lawsuit against the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in federal court to challenge the regulator’s authority to grant banking charters to crypto companies. The complaint targets interpretive letter #1176 from January 2021 and a rule effective in April 2026, which allow digital asset companies to obtain national trust bank status without collecting deposits or meeting obligations required of commercial banks. The lawsuit directly names Protego Holdings, which received conditional approval in February 2026 to create National Digital Trust Company, alongside other firms such as Circle, Ripple, Paxos, Fidelity Digital Assets, BitGo and Coinbase that obtained similar authorizations between December 2025 and April 2026. The ICBA argues that Congress did not authorize the OCC to issue such charters to companies whose primary activity involves non-fiduciary services related to digital assets. An ICBA victory would weaken the entire regulatory framework that enabled these authorizations.
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