The CFTC cleared crypto firms with federal trust charter approvals to settle daily trades after the regulator’s clearing division issued an early November letter confirming that it will not p
The CFTC cleared crypto firms with federal trust charter approvals to settle daily trades after the regulator’s clearing division issued an early November letter confirming that it will not pursue enforcement against derivatives clearinghouses that choose these trust companies over traditional banks.
While the letter lands as a boost for the firms that have acquired trust charters since the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) started to issue conditional approvals in December 2025, it has not been received well by traditional banks, with community banks taking that fight to court.
In a May 18 letter to Comptroller Jonathan Gould, Senator Elizabeth Warren noted that the agency had cleared at least nine crypto trust charters since December 2025. National trust banks can custody assets and settle payments. However, they do not carry FDIC insurance, cannot take deposits or make loans.
Staff Letter 26-30 issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Division of Clearing and Risk and signed by Acting Director Richard Haynes clarifies that the division will not recommend enforcement action against derivatives clearing organizations that use trust companies to handle daily settlements with their clearing members.
The no-action letter stipulates that clearinghouses can go this route as long as they treat trust companies as settlement banks for compliance with Regulations 39.14(c) and (d).
The CFTC’s clearing division sent the letter in response to an October 29 request from Nodal Clear, which acts as the registered clearinghouse for CFTC-designated contract markets, Nodal Exchange and Coinbase Derivatives.
Notably, the clarification on how the regulator will enforce the position applies to any clearinghouse that clears the bar, not just Nodal Clear.
The CFTC’s November 5 letter clarifies what counts as a settlement bank in Regulation 39.14, the rule that covers how daily settlement as well as clearing-member and customer funds are handled by clearinghouses. The regulator noted that the original version, which does not include trust companies in its definition of settlement banks, has gone mostly unrevised since it was adopted in 2011.
Elsewhere in the rulebook, the terms sit side by side. Section 4d of the Commodity Exchange Act and Parts 1 and 22 of the Commission’s regulations require customer funds to be kept with a bank or trust company.
Nodal argued that an institution should be able to handle settlement if it is already trusted to hold customer funds. It added that bringing trust companies into the workflow would let clearinghouses fold digital assets into their collateral operations.
Nodal noted that New York’s Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) applies similar scrutiny to both banks and trust companies, which it charters under the same banking law.
The pushback is already in federal court. The Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC and Gould in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in early October 2026, filing under the Administrative Procedure Act.
The trade group says the agency has “far exceeded” its statutory authority, and wants the court to strike both an OCC rule and a 2021 interpretive letter and to rescind the charter granted to crypto firm Protego Holdings.
ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said in the lawsuit that the approach “creates a gaping hole in financial regulation.” Gould has defended the charters, telling a Semafor event in May that the agency does not “have a zero risk tolerance anymore.”
The CFTC’s settlement relief widens the bank-like footprint banks are contesting, letting a chartered trust company sit at the center of derivatives clearing without the full bank rulebook.
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