The crypto exchange EDX applied to the OCC for a banking license, with Charles Schwab Wealth Management backing its entry

Crypto exchange EDX Markets Holding Company, jointly backed by Wall Street financial institutions such as Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, and Fidelity Investments, confirmed on April 1 that it has filed an application with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national trust bank charter. The plan is to obtain a compliant framework and provide digital-asset custody, asset management, and trading settlement services.

EDX’s OCC Application: Service Positioning and Strategic Logic

In its application documents submitted to the OCC, EDX clearly lays out the market gap it intends to enter. The documents note that role specialization in traditional financial markets is already quite mature—broker-dealers serve retail customers, market makers provide liquidity, exchanges execute matching, and custodians hold assets on behalf of different parties. As for the digital-asset market, this kind of orderly separation of roles has not yet taken shape. That is the institutional service space EDX is trying to fill.

It is worth being explicit: an OCC national trust bank charter does not allow a licensed institution to provide traditional banking business, such as accepting deposits or issuing loans. Its core value for crypto firms is that, once approved, it will significantly increase the trust level of institutional investors, enabling licensed institutions to reach more easily large institutional clients that are unwilling to deal directly with unregulated crypto platforms.

A Wave of OCC Applications in the Crypto Industry: EDX Joins a Larger Competitive Set

EDX’s application is the latest case in the recent wave of crypto firms seeking OCC national trust licenses. Crypto companies that have submitted applications to the OCC or are seeking to do so publicly include:

Bridge: a stablecoin infrastructure company

Ripple: an XRP and cross-border payments protocol developer

Circle: the USDC stablecoin issuer

BitGo: an institutional digital-asset custody provider

Fidelity Digital Assets: the crypto business division under the Fidelity group

Paxos: a regulated stablecoin and tokenized-asset platform

This trend reflects a structural shift in the U.S. crypto regulatory environment: as the regulatory path becomes clearer, mainstream institutions are actively participating in digital-asset services within compliant frameworks, rather than continuing to wait for external rules to settle.

Behind the Institutional Capital Roster: Backers Beyond Charles Schwab

Behind EDX’s application is a substantial institutional capital background. In addition to Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, and Fidelity, Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, and Virtu Financial are also supporting shareholders of EDX. The exchange launched in 2023 and, since its founding, has been positioned as an institutional-only trading venue, not open to retail investors.

If the OCC license application is approved, EDX would be able to, on top of its existing trading-matching capabilities, offer institutional clients a unified “exchange + custody + settlement” closed-loop service—an institutional service framework that is still not fully complete in the U.S. crypto market today.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the practical significance of an OCC national trust bank charter for crypto companies?

OCC-chartered trust institutions do not have the traditional bank functions of accepting deposits or issuing loans, but they carry important meaning within a compliant framework. They allow licensed institutions to provide digital-asset custody, asset management, and trading settlement services under a federal regulatory framework, significantly improve trust among institutional clients, and reduce the pressure those institutions face during compliance reviews.

Why did traditional financial institutions like Charles Schwab choose to invest in EDX?

Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and Citadel Securities’ investment in EDX reflects strategic bets on the long-term growth of the institutional crypto services market. Backing an institutional-grade crypto trading platform with a complete compliance framework is a more solid route into the crypto industry while controlling regulatory risk—one that aligns better with large traditional financial institutions’ risk-control frameworks than directly participating in crypto-asset trading.

How does EDX’s business positioning differ from mainstream exchanges like Coinbase?

From the very beginning, EDX has clearly positioned itself as a trading venue exclusively for institutional investors. It is not open to retail customers, and its primary target is large institutions whose counterparty risk and compliance requirements are extremely high. By contrast, mainstream exchanges such as Coinbase serve both retail and institutional users. EDX’s OCC license application further reinforces its institutional-only positioning, giving it a differentiated market space in the competitive landscape.