EDX Markets Applies for OCC Trust Bank Charter to Expand Crypto Custody

Citadel-backed EDX Markets has filed with the OCC to establish a national trust bank for institutional crypto custody, joining Coinbase, Zerohash, and others pursuing federal charters.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice.

What EDX Filed

EDX Markets, an institutional crypto exchange backed by Citadel Securities, Virtu Financial, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Hudson River Trading, applied to the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in April 2026 to establish a national trust bank for crypto custody, asset management, and trade-settlement services.

The proposed entity, EDX Trust, would operate as a non-depository national bank, separating custody and settlement from trading while routing order matching through EDX's existing exchange platform. The bank would operate online from Chicago and target institutional clients including broker-dealers, futures commission merchants, and registered investment advisers.

Why Separation Matters

EDX's application explicitly names structural risk as a motivation. Combining trading, custody, and brokerage within a single platform creates potential conflicts of interest and single points of failure — a structural criticism of exchanges like FTX that collapsed in 2022. EDX Trust would provide fiduciary asset management, invest client cash in highly liquid assets, and facilitate trading through a riskless principal model with end-of-day net settlement.

Moving those functions into an OCC-chartered entity allows EDX to offer services nationwide under a single federal regulatory framework while meeting custody requirements for regulated institutions that cannot use non-chartered custodians.

Who Else Is Filing

EDX is joining a growing queue. Coinbase applied for an OCC trust bank charter in October 2025 and is awaiting a decision. Zerohash, a blockchain infrastructure company, filed for a national trust bank charter around the same time as EDX. Laser Digital and Payoneer filed applications earlier in 2026 for custody and stablecoin-related payment services.

The wave of filings reflects a calculated bet: a federal OCC charter provides regulatory clarity that state-by-state licensing cannot, and gives institutions with federal oversight mandates a path to using these custodians. It also positions charter holders to expand into new products — stablecoin issuance, tokenized asset custody — under a unified federal framework.

What This Means

The OCC charter wave is a structural shift in how institutional crypto infrastructure will be regulated in the United States. As more custodians achieve federal banking status, the separation between traditional finance and digital asset markets narrows. For context on compliance infrastructure at the protocol level, see our overview of XRPL trust line compliance features.