Coinbase Secures Federal Trust Charter, Positioning Platform as Premier Institutional Custody Provider

**San Francisco, CA — January 23, 2025** — Coinbase Global, Inc. today announced it has received approval for a federal trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a milestone that fundamentally reshapes how institutional investors can access digital asset custody services within a federally regulated framework.

The charter grants Coinbase Trust Company federal bank-level standing, allowing the firm to offer custody services to pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, registered investment advisers, and corporate treasuries operating under fiduciary mandates that previously made crypto exposure legally complicated or outright prohibitive. Unlike state-level trust charters, the federal designation carries uniform recognition across all 50 states, eliminating the patchwork compliance burden that has historically slowed institutional adoption.

"This is not a symbolic win," said Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase. "Institutional allocators have told us for years that regulatory clarity is the single largest barrier between them and meaningful digital asset exposure. A federal trust charter answers that directly. We are now operating within the same supervisory structure that governs traditional custodians holding trillions in client assets, and that changes the conversation entirely." The company reports that its institutional custody division currently safeguards more than $130 billion in assets under custody, a figure executives expect to grow materially as endowments and insurance companies revisit allocation policies in light of the new designation.

The timing arrives as Washington signals a broader shift in its posture toward digital assets. The OCC's willingness to extend a federal trust charter to a crypto-native firm marks a departure from the agency's historically cautious approach and reflects sustained lobbying efforts by the industry to establish workable federal pathways rather than rely on ad hoc enforcement guidance. Coinbase will remain subject to OCC examination cycles, capital adequacy requirements, and annual third-party audits, conditions the company says it welcomed as a mechanism for building durable institutional trust rather than viewing them as regulatory overhead.

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About Coinbase

Coinbase Global, Inc. (NASDAQ: COIN) is a publicly traded digital asset exchange and financial infrastructure company founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company operates trading, custody, staking, and prime brokerage services for retail customers, institutional investors, and government entities across more than 100 countries. Coinbase is regulated in multiple jurisdictions and is a registered Money Services Business with FinCEN. For media inquiries, contact press@coinbase.com.