If you want to open any kind of national bank in this country you have to get permission from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC. That includes opening a national trust bank, a sort of quasi-commercial bank whose primary function is neither to accept deposits nor make loans. National trust banks exist to hold and manage assets. Increasingly these days, that means cryptocurrency. National trust banks used to be comparatively rare, and even today there are only about 60 in the whole country. Lately, however, OCC has been inundated with applications from crypto firms looking to charter in-house national trust banks so they don’t have to rely on outside banks to hold crypto assets on their behalf.

You’ve probably heard of one crypto company that applied for a national trust bank charter earlier this year. It’s called World Liberty Financial, or WLF, and the Trump family owns a 38 percent stake in it and collects 75 percent of all of its crypto revenue. The Trumps invested not a penny in this venture, nor is any family member employed there. Yet last year President Donald Trump collected nearly $600 million from WLF, according to his financial statement.

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