Community bankers have taken the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to federal court, arguing that the agency has stretched its chartering power to let cryptocurrency firms enter the banking system under a lighter set of rules than traditional lenders face.
On October 2, 2026, the Independent Community Bankers of America filed a complaint in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against the OCC and Comptroller Jonathan V. Gould in his official capacity.
The case, brought under the Administrative Procedure Act, asks the court to set aside a March 2, 2026 final rule titled National Bank Chartering and the related Interpretive Letter No. 1176, issued in January 2021.
The association also seeks to undo the conditional national trust bank approval granted to Protego Holdings Corp.
The trade group, which represents thousands of institutions that mostly hold less than $10 billion in assets, contends that the rule and letter claim authority the National Bank Act does not give.
In the association’s reading, Congress limited the OCC to chartering full-service banks that take deposits and engage in the business of banking, bankers’ banks that serve only other banks, and trust banks whose activities are fiduciary.
A 1978 amendment, the complaint argues, merely clarified that a national bank is not illegally constituted solely because the comptroller has required its operations to be limited to those of a trust company and related activities.
It did not, the bankers say, open the door to limited-purpose charters for firms that are neither depository institutions nor primarily fiduciary.
According to the latest filing, the current administration has approved or conditionally approved 21 national trust banks, at least 13 of them cryptocurrency companies.
Those approvals, the association maintains, rest on the challenged rule and letter and therefore exceed statutory limits.
The complaint further describes the approvals as arbitrary and capricious, alleging that the agency discounted warnings about weak risk controls and governance that lacks independent oversight.
The practical effect, the bankers argue, is a regulatory gap.
National trust banks that do not accept deposits sit outside much of the federal framework that applies to insured depository institutions, including Community Reinvestment Act duties, consolidated supervision, capital and liquidity standards, and deposit insurance.
The federal charter also preempts many state rules, including certain consumer protections.
The association says the result is that firms engaged in volatile digital asset custody, trading, lending, and issuance can compete nationwide while avoiding costs that community banks must bear.
Two unnamed member banks, each with less than $2.5 billion in assets, are cited as examples; each reportedly spends more than $1.5 million a year on requirements that do not apply to the crypto trust banks, and each says it has already lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in business this year to firms that received conditional approvals.
ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said consumers reasonably expect a federally chartered bank to carry federal safeguards, and that digital assets held at a crypto firm under a national trust charter do not.
She described the trust charter as something Congress did not design as a side entrance for firms seeking the credibility of a federal bank charter without the obligations that apply to insured institutions.
The complaint also notes that, before the recent wave of applications, the OCC had not chartered a national bank that neither took deposits nor performed fiduciary activities, and that the agency has not managed an uninsured bank receivership in nearly a century.
Failures of large, uninsured crypto trust banks, the association warns, could transmit instability to the broader system.
The suit specifically highlights Protego, whose business centers on digital asset custody, trading, lending, and issuance.
The association had opposed that application, citing risk and control weaknesses. Protego cut most of its staff in 2023 and faced vendor judgments over unpaid bills; it nonetheless received conditional approval in February 2026. An OCC spokesperson has declined to comment on the litigation.