Zeros

There's a question quietly circulating near digital currency water coolers that deserves more attention than it's getting: is Bitcoin — by design or by drift — positioning itself to slip through the back door of the American banking system, using underutilized national bank charters as the key? It sounds like a conspiracy theory. It might not be. In just 83 days, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency under Trump -appointed Comptroller Jonathan Gould granted conditional national bank charters to eleven digital asset and fintech firms — including Ripple, Crypto.com, Circle, BitGo, Paxos, and Fidelity Digital Assets. That's a stunning pace, and it raises a reasonable question: what exactly does a national bank charter give a digital assets company that it couldn't already get on its own? The short answer is legitimacy. And access. Bitcoin, as a decentralized asset, has long existed in a regulatory gray zone. It doesn't technically require state-by...