The proposed Galaxy National Bank would hold custody, trading, staking and fiduciary advisory under one federal supervisor, on top of the more than 50 licenses Galaxy already has. Nothing is approved, and Ripple's comparable charter took nearly a year to move from conditional approval to final authorization.
Galaxy Digital said on Thursday that its subsidiary Galaxy Digital LP has applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish Galaxy National Bank, a national trust bank headquartered in New York.
If the regulator approves it, the bank would operate as a federally regulated trust institution offering digital asset custody, trading and staking, along with fiduciary investment advisory services. Galaxy's stated reason is reach. The charter would let the company serve clients across the country under one federal supervisor rather than assembling permissions state by state.
Nothing has been approved. Galaxy announced an application, not a decision, and it did not say when the filing went in. Its own forward-looking statements set out what could happen instead: the OCC could decline the application, approve it on different terms or with conditions, or take longer than expected, and Galaxy may not meet whatever conditions an approval carries.
The distance between an application and an operating bank is wide in practice. Ripple's national trust bank received final authorization from the OCC on October 26, nearly a year after the conditional approval it won in December 2025, FinanceFeeds reported. A conditional approval lets a firm build a bank; it does not let that bank hold client assets.
Galaxy is not short of permissions now. The company says it holds more than 50 licenses across the United States, Europe and Asia, including SEC-registered broker-dealer subsidiaries that are FINRA members, a CFTC-registered swap dealer subsidiary and a UK subsidiary authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority. The New York State Department of Financial Services recently granted a subsidiary a BitLicense and a money transmission license covering institutional digital asset trading and custody in New York.
The BitLicense matters for reading the application. Galaxy can already trade and custody digital assets for institutions in New York under state supervision. What a federal charter would change is reach and the number of regulators the business answers to, not whether it can hold client assets at all.
Mike Novogratz, Galaxy's founder and chief executive, called the charter "an important next step" in the announcement.
Standard Chartered agreed last week to take full ownership of Zodia's custody arm and spin out its software business. The OCC, meanwhile, has been setting the terms crypto firms operate under, dropping the presumption that affiliate and third-party payments count as prohibited stablecoin yield while refusing safe harbors for existing rewards programs.
What Thursday's announcement establishes is what Galaxy asked for, not what it will get. The OCC has not commented, and Galaxy gave no target date. The risk language in its own release, which contemplates approval on different terms, with conditions, or later than expected, is the only timetable the company has offered.
