OpenReserve Holdings, backed by Andreessen Horowitz and seeded with $25 million, has received preliminary approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national bank charter focused on onchain settlement. This makes it one of the first crypto-native firms to reach this regulatory milestone under the OCC's conditional approval framework, though full charter grant remains contingent on meeting capitalization and operational requirements.
For Armada's crypto repo desk, a federally chartered onchain settlement bank introduces a new class of potential counterparty and infrastructure provider operating under federal prudential supervision. This could affect how Armada structures settlement finality for BTC, ETH, and tokenized T-Bill collateral trades, and warrants evaluation alongside the existing Fireblocks custody model to determine whether OpenReserve's rails offer clearing or settlement advantages.