Stablecoin issuer Circle has been approved to set up a trust bank with limited contribution to direct income and is intended to be in compliance with regulations over the long term
Circle, the “first stablecoin stock”, obtained a new license. On July 12, a Beijing Business Daily reporter noticed that Circle Internet Group, a stablecoin issuer listed on the U.S. stock market, recently announced that it has received approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a digital asset trust bank (First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A.) and will operate under the name Circle National Trust.
Circle, the “first stablecoin stock”, obtained a new license. On July 12, a Beijing Business Daily reporter noticed that Circle Internet Group, a stablecoin issuer listed on the US stock market, recently announced that it had received approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a digital asset trust bank (First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A.) and will operate under the name Circle National Trust. According to the introduction, after the establishment of Circle National Trust, it will provide fiduciary digital asset custody services for Circle and its affiliated companies. In addition, in accordance with the business plan approved by the OCC, the National Trust Bank established by Circle may eventually provide digital asset custody services directly to a limited number of institutional customers, with a focus on banks and other financial institutions, such as regulated derivatives institutions. Public information shows that Circle was founded in 2013 and is a financial technology company headquartered in the United States. Its core product is the stable currency USDC. This stablecoin is anchored 1:1 with the U.S. dollar and is fully supported by U.S. dollar cash and short-term U.S. Treasury bond reserves. Its market share is second only to USDT issued by Tether, and it is also the world's largest regulated stablecoin. Focusing on the stablecoin business, since 2015, Circle has successively obtained licenses from financial regulatory authorities in New York State, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Bermuda, and Abu Dhabi. In June 2025, Circle was officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the United States, and was called the "first stablecoin stock" by the market. At the end of the same month, Circle submitted an application for a digital asset trust bank license to the OCC and received conditional approval from the OCC in December 2025. At that time, the OCC announced that a total of five institutions, including Circle, had approved their applications for national trust bank licenses. How to understand the concept of digital asset trust bank? Yu Jianing, co-chairman of the China Communications Industry Association Blockchain Committee, pointed out that a digital asset trust bank can be understood as a limited license bank subject to federal supervision that specializes in asset custody and trustee management. It is not a commercial bank that accepts deposits and issues loans in the traditional sense. Judging from the approved business plan, Circle National Trust will initially host digital assets for Circle and its affiliates. In the future, it will be able to provide custody services to some institutional clients, and plans to undertake functions such as USDC reserve asset management. Yu Jianing further explained that in the past, Circle's compliance basis was mainly based on state-level licenses and overseas authorizations. Now that it has been directly supervised by the OCC, it means that it has entered the core framework of U.S. federal financial supervision, and the distance from low-compliance peers has been further widened. The current circulation of USDT is about 184.1 billion U.S. dollars, and USDC is about 73.2 billion U.S. dollars. Circle is at a disadvantage in terms of scale. At the same time, custody services are aimed at banks and regulated financial institutions. Such customers are extremely sensitive to compliance qualifications, and a federal license is a prerequisite for their cooperation. But in the short term, the direct contribution of this license to the company's revenue is limited, and is more reflected in compliance infrastructure and long-term competition thresholds. Affected by this news, Circle's stock price strengthened significantly. After the market opened on July 10, local time, Circle's share price rose by more than 13%, hitting an intraday high of $72.86. As of the close of the day, Circle closed up 4.97% at $66.14. Judging from the stock price performance, Circle closed up 484.81% in its first month of listing, and the company's stock price once approached US$300 that month. Since then, Circle's stock price has shown an overall downward trend. In June 2026, Circle's stock price fell by more than 44%, the largest single-month decline since its listing. Yu Jianing said that Circle's stock price fell sharply in June. On the one hand, the launch of the OUSD Alliance stablecoin directly impacted the issuer's profit model of exclusive reserve income. On the other hand, during the annual reorganization of the FTSE Russell Index in June, Circle was removed from multiple key Russell growth indexes.
In recent years, relying on the advantages of second-level settlement and low cost, stablecoins have been widely used in cross-border remittances in emerging markets, foreign trade B2B settlement and other scenarios, and foreign traditional payment giants and commercial banks have made arrangements. At the same time, in the face of a series of risks that may arise from stablecoins such as de-anchoring, money laundering, and misappropriation, compliance frameworks in many countries and regions are also accelerating. According to Yu Jianing, stablecoins are gradually entering real financial scenarios such as payment, cross-border settlement, corporate fund management, and tokenized asset transactions from trading tools in the crypto market. The United States has promoted reserve assets, information disclosure, anti-money laundering and ongoing regulatory rules around the GENIUS Act. Compliance licenses will become an important pass for expanding institutional applications of stablecoins. The boundaries between stablecoins and the traditional banking system will continue to blur. Circle has established a trust bank, and major banks such as JPMorgan Chase are promoting tokenized deposits. Two-way penetration is happening at the same time. Issuers need to find a new balance between compliance premium and income transfer. The high-profit model that relies solely on reserve interest is difficult to maintain in the long term. (
In recent years, relying on the advantages of second-level settlement and low cost, stablecoins have been widely used in cross-border remittances in emerging markets, foreign trade B2B settlement and other scenarios, and foreign traditional payment giants and commercial banks have made arrangements. At the same time, in the face of a series of risks that may arise from stablecoins such as de-anchoring, money laundering, and misappropriation, compliance frameworks in many countries and regions are also accelerating. According to Yu Jianing, stablecoins are gradually entering real financial scenarios such as payment, cross-border settlement, corporate fund management, and tokenized asset transactions from trading tools in the crypto market. The United States has promoted reserve assets, information disclosure, anti-money laundering and ongoing regulatory rules around the GENIUS Act. Compliance licenses will become an important pass for expanding institutional applications of stablecoins. The boundaries between stablecoins and the traditional banking system will continue to blur. Circle has established a trust bank, and major banks such as JPMorgan Chase are promoting tokenized deposits. Two-way penetration is happening at the same time. Issuers need to find a new balance between compliance premium and income transfer. The high-profit model that relies solely on reserve interest is difficult to maintain in the long term. (