A signal: OpenReserve, led by MoneyLion co-founders Dee Choubey and Richard Correia, received on September 2 preliminary conditional approval from the OCC to form a national bank. Founded in 2025 and planned to launch in Salt Lake City, this blockchain-native bank positions itself as a one-stop financial services provider offering stablecoin payments, on-chain clearing and settlement, and compliant deposits—with no physical branch locations across the United States.
The significance for the stablecoin arena is worth saying separately. Over the past few years, what we’ve mostly seen has been exchanges holding their own assets, institutional custody, and the compliance of stablecoin issuance. The path of “bank charter + blockchain-native” has always been missing a formally cleared player. With OpenReserve receiving preliminary conditional approval, it effectively marks the first time, through a traditional regulator’s lens, that the “blockchain-native + national bank” combination has been recognized—this is a signal at the infrastructure level, not the project level.
The capital side is also already in place: the seed round was led by Wintermute, and the team has dual-track experience spanning both traditional financial technology and crypto exchange trading—an uncommon combination. The charter application was submitted to the OCC in April 2026. With preliminary approval taking five months, the pace itself also indicates that regulators’ stance toward this route is changing.
What will truly determine success or failure are the next three hurdles: pre-opening review, securing approximately $210 million in fully paid-in capital, and obtaining approval for FDIC deposit insurance. Only when all three steps are successfully cleared will the country’s first “on-chain native national bank” be firmly in place. If any step is delayed, market momentum will quickly cool.
A note for industry peers: as compliant bank charters begin opening up to blockchain-native projects, the question of stablecoin “infrastructure ownership” will enter a new phase this year.
#StableCoin #Web3Banking