Still, the company had recently advertised jobs — including for a national trust officer and a chief operating officer — at a “Zerohash National Trust Bank” that it indicated had a “pending charter application” before the OCC. And Zerohash Co-president Stephen Gardner's LinkedIn page lists him as CEO of the “zerohash national trust bank (pending).”
For its part, Zerohash indicated that the initial OCC application may have been ambitious in the scope of the trust bank's planned operations, having covered “a wide range of digital asset and fiduciary services,” the company said, adding that the next effort will take a more “sequenced” approach, starting with an application for “a more focused approval of national trust activities aligned with our intended rollout timeline.”
The firm is looking forward “to swift review of the resubmission,” it said.
The original effort in March joined the rush of firms hoping to be among the trust-bank provisional approvals flooding the U.S. with new crypto-oriented banks, especially amplified in the wake of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act that formally established a legal structure for U.S. stablecoin issuers. But Zerohash's application was sent back on July 17, according to OCC records, which don't reveal the specific cause.