The Block, a company founded by Jack Dorsey, requested authorization from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to create Builders Bank & Trust, a federal banking institution focused on custody and fiduciary services, including for Bitcoin and stablecoins. The request was announced by the company on Tuesday (8).
Despite the name, Builders Bank would not function as a traditional commercial bank. The institution would be structured as a national trust bank without deposit insurance, would not receive customer deposits and would not make loans.
If the license is approved, the bank will be directly under the OCC’s supervision and will allow Block to concentrate certain custody activities in a single federal regulatory framework. The company says the model was designed to support the expansion of these services without depending on different state regimes.
Approval is not yet guaranteed. The application will undergo the OCC’s review, and Builders Bank will not be able to begin operations before receiving the necessary regulatory authorizations. Lee Woolley, currently in charge of Block’s digital asset strategy, was appointed to take on the role of president and CEO of the new institution.
The move comes amid rising interest from financial and crypto companies in federal banking licenses in the United States. In August, the OCC said it had received 40 applications to create new banks over approximately 18 months, of which 23 involved some type of activity with digital assets.
The regulator itself maintains a specific office for licensing requests from institutions that intend to offer cryptoasset-related products or services, indicating the growing presence of this type of operation in the banking system supervised at the federal level.
