Eleven companies filed for or received OCC national trust bank charters in 83 days between December 2025 and March 2026. Up to 20 additional institutions — banks and large technology firms — are queued to issue stablecoins through Anchorage Digital, the first federally chartered crypto bank. The ...
"I think it's a net bad for the growth of stablecoins as a whole, because you have two counterparties that have pros and cons to what they've built, and the design choices they've made. But they don't work for every use case." — Ben O'Neill, Head of Money Movement, Bridge (Stripe)
Eleven companies filed for or received OCC national trust bank charters in 83 days between December 2025 and March 2026. Up to 20 additional institutions — banks and large technology firms — are queued to issue stablecoins through Anchorage Digital, the first federally chartered crypto bank. The stablecoin market has reached $320.6 billion in total supply as of May 2026, and the post-GENIUS Act regulatory framework is pulling traditional financial institutions into direct competition with Tether ($185B market cap) and Circle ($79B market cap) for the first time.
The OCC published its proposed rulemaking on February 25, 2026, establishing capital requirements, liquidity buffers, governance structures, and third-party risk management standards for payment stablecoin issuers. The American Bankers Association and Bank Policy Institute have asked for a 60-day extension on comment periods, arguing the multi-agency rule proposals are interdependent and difficult to evaluate separately. The tension between speed-to-market and regulatory caution is now the defining dynamic of the stablecoin issuance landscape.
The OCC triggered a wave of applications on December 12, 2025, when it simultaneously granted conditional approvals to five companies: Ripple, Circle (filing as First National Digital Currency Bank), BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos. The first three were de novo applicants; BitGo, Fidelity, and Paxos converted from existing state trust companies.
A second wave followed in February 2026. Bridge, Stripe's stablecoin infrastructure subsidiary, received conditional approval around February 12. Protego was approved in early February on its second attempt after an initial 2021 approval had expired. Crypto.com received approval on February 23.
Three more companies filed before March 5: Morgan Stanley (as Morgan Stanley Digital Trust National Association, filed February 18), Payoneer (filed February 24), and Zerohash (filed March 4-5). Coinbase and World Liberty Financial have pending applications under review.
The pattern is clear: the GENIUS Act's passage on July 18, 2025, created a regulatory pathway, and the OCC's December batch approvals signaled it was open for business. The 83-day period from December 12, 2025, to March 5, 2026, produced more crypto-related charter activity than the previous four years combined, according to FinTech Weekly.
Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley disclosed at Consensus Miami 2026 on May 7 that the company has a pipeline of "a dozen to maybe even as many as 20 institutional issuers or large tech company issuers" waiting to launch stablecoins through its white-label platform.
McCauley stated: "Since the Genius Act passed, Anchorage has won every single large stablecoin issuance mandate across the landscape."
Anchorage currently issues four stablecoins for brand partners:
| Stablecoin | Partner | Status | |-----------|---------|--------| | USDtb | Ethena Labs | Live — first GENIUS-compliant federally regulated stablecoin | | USAT | Tether | Live — Tether's U.S.-regulated entry, launched January 2026 | | USDGO | OSL Group | Live | | USDPT | Western Union | Near launch — targeting H1 2026, built on Solana |
The white-label offering includes multi-chain smart contract deployment across 45+ blockchains, primary market operations for minting and burning, Know Your Business (KYB) onboarding, transaction monitoring with direct OCC reporting, and reserve management with audits and attestations.
On April 30, 2026, Anchorage partnered with M0, a stablecoin technology provider already used by Stripe, MoonPay, and MetaMask, to create a modular issuance stack. The integration combines M0's middleware with Anchorage's regulated custody and reserve management, creating what the companies describe as a "pre-integrated" path from stablecoin design to compliant issuance.
The major U.S. banks are no longer observing from the sidelines. According to a Convergences analysis of the ten largest systemically important banks, 24 distinct digital asset initiatives are now in production — spanning tokenization platforms, deposit tokens, digital financing, crypto custody, and stablecoin issuance.
JPMorgan Chase maintains the broadest portfolio with four live initiatives, all at production scale. Its Kinexys unit launched JPMD, a deposit token, on Coinbase's Base network following a June 2025 proof-of-concept with B2C2, Coinbase, and Mastercard. A EUR-denominated version (JPME) is scheduled for 2026, and Canton Network integration backed by Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas is rolling out in phases.
Bank of America has publicly confirmed stablecoin launch plans. CEO Brian Moynihan said in early 2026 that the bank would issue a stablecoin once regulatory clarity was established; reports suggest a mid-2026 target if legislation holds.
Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser confirmed the bank is evaluating stablecoin issuance, though she emphasized tokenized deposits as the more immediate focus.
A broader collaborative effort is also underway. JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo are exploring a joint stablecoin project through Early Warning Services (EWS), which operates the Zelle payment network, and The Clearing House (TCH), which handles real-time interbank payments.
The OCC's February 25, 2026, notice of proposed rulemaking establishes the regulatory architecture for what the GENIUS Act calls "Permitted Payment Stablecoin Issuers" (PPSIs). The framework applies to national banks, federal savings associations, foreign payment stablecoin issuers, and nonbank entities seeking federal qualified PPSI status.
Key requirements include:
The GENIUS Act's effective date is the earlier of 18 months after enactment (January 2027) or 120 days after regulators issue final rules. The FDIC published a parallel proposed rulemaking on April 10, 2026, covering FDIC-supervised institutions.
The American Bankers Association and Bank Policy Institute formally requested a 60-day extension on comment periods in an April 22 letter, arguing that the OCC, FDIC, FinCEN, OFAC, and Federal Reserve are all issuing interdependent rules simultaneously. The banking groups stated their comments "will necessarily be more comprehensive, and therefore more useful to the agencies, if we have sufficient time to evaluate the proposed rules together."
Tether and Circle together control approximately 82% of the $320.6 billion stablecoin market by supply. USDT holds a $185.5 billion market cap (approximately 58% share); USDC holds $79 billion (approximately 25% share).
However, volume data tells a different story. According to 2026 data, USDC now accounts for 64% of total adjusted stablecoin trading volume, reversing a trend that saw USDT dominate this metric from 2019 through 2025. Circle's IPO as a publicly traded company (ticker: CRCL) has also increased its regulatory transparency relative to Tether.
Both issuers are adapting. Tether launched USAT, a U.S.-regulated stablecoin issued through Anchorage Digital, in January 2026 — a direct move to establish a compliant domestic presence. Circle, having received conditional OCC charter approval in December 2025, is positioning USDC as the default institutional rail.
The competitive threat from banks is real but structurally different. Bank-issued stablecoins and deposit tokens are designed for specific corridors: wholesale settlement, card network clearing, cross-border payments, and interbank liquidity. They are unlikely to replace USDT's role in emerging-market retail or USDC's role in DeFi, at least in the near term. But in the institutional settlement layer — where transaction sizes are large and counterparty requirements are strict — bank-issued tokens have a natural advantage.
Bridge's Ben O'Neill articulated the emerging market thesis at Consensus Miami on May 6: the future is not one or two dominant stablecoins but many purpose-built tokens optimized for specific use cases. He noted that a company like Visa, conducting trillions of dollars in card settlement, faces material costs when burning USDC at scale.
The data supports fragmentation. Among the stablecoins currently issued or planned through Anchorage alone, each serves a different function: USDtb targets institutional DeFi, USAT provides Tether's U.S. regulatory compliance layer, USDGO serves Asian institutional markets through OSL, and USDPT targets the $900 billion remittance market through Western Union's network in 40+ countries.
The OCC's framework, by standardizing reserve, capital, and governance requirements, effectively commoditizes the compliance layer. This lowers the barrier to issuance for any institution that meets the standards, shifting the competitive axis from "who can get regulatory approval" to "who has the best distribution and use-case fit."
O'Neill also pointed to a need for clearing infrastructure — the ability to swap between stablecoins efficiently — as a prerequisite for a multi-stablecoin ecosystem. Without it, fragmentation creates friction rather than optionality.
The stablecoin market is transitioning from a duopoly dominated by two crypto-native issuers to a fragmented landscape where banks, fintechs, and technology companies compete on distribution and use-case specificity. The GENIUS Act and the OCC's rulemaking have created the regulatory scaffolding; the 11 charter applications in 83 days and the 20-firm Anchorage pipeline are the market's response.
The question is no longer whether banks will issue stablecoins — they are already doing so. The open question is whether the infrastructure for inter-stablecoin clearing and settlement can keep pace with issuance. Without efficient swap mechanisms, each new stablecoin adds liquidity fragmentation. With them, the market moves toward a model resembling traditional correspondent banking: many issuers, standardized compliance, and competition on distribution.
Total stablecoin supply is projected to surpass $350 billion by Q3 2026 if current growth holds. The share captured by bank-issued tokens versus crypto-native issuers will depend on how quickly the OCC finalizes its rules and whether the joint bank initiative through EWS and TCH reaches production. The data suggests the race is on.