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Charles Schwab-Backed EDX Markets Applies for National Trust Bank Charter With OCC 

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Charles Schwab-Backed EDX Markets Applies for National Trust Bank Charter With OCC 

EDX Markets Holding Company Files OCC Charter Application for Crypto Trust Bank

The application was made public on Wednesday, April 1, and first reported on by Bloomberg. It requests full fiduciary powers under 12 U.S.C. § 92a and authorization to provide digital asset custody, asset management, and settlement services exclusively for institutional clients. The proposed main office is located at 200 W. Madison, Suite 1450, Chicago, IL 60606.

EDX Markets launched in June 2023 as an institutional-only cryptocurrency exchange. Its founding backers include Citadel Securities, Fidelity Digital Assets, Charles Schwab, Virtu Financial, Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, Hudson River Trading, and Miami International Holdings.

The platform operates on a non-custodial model, meaning it does not hold client assets during trading, a structure that mirrors how traditional finance (TradFi) firms separate custody from execution. The proposed trust bank would not change that separation. EDX Trust would handle custody, asset management, and settlement. Order matching and trading would remain with its affiliate, EDX Markets LLC.

If approved, EDX Trust would offer fiduciary custody of digital assets, cash, and stablecoins, using sub-custodian banks to manage private keys and reduce single points of failure. The bank would also manage custodied cash and stablecoins by investing them in highly liquid assets, targeting returns near the federal funds rate, along with permissible staking and yield-generating activity.

Settlement services would include riskless principal trading and end-of-day net settlement for clients operating on the EDX Markets platform or in over-the-counter (OTC) venues. The bank would not conduct proprietary trading.

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The proposed board includes five members, among them independents with banking and risk backgrounds from First Business Financial, UBS, and Charles Schwab. Management draws from executives who have worked at Cboe Digital, the Options Clearing Corporation, Coinbase, and Kraken.

CEO José Antonio Acuña-Rohter, who previously led ErisX and Cboe Digital, is heading the effort. The bank would have no physical branches and no retail services. All operations would run electronically through APIs and a graphical interface.

The OCC added the application to its public list of pending digital asset licensing applications on March 26. No decision timeline has been announced.

The filing joins a growing list of crypto and fintech firms seeking national trust bank charters since late 2025. In December 2025, the OCC granted conditional approvals to five crypto-related institutions, including de novo charters for Ripple National Trust Bank and First National Digital Currency Bank, along with conversions for Bitgo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos. Early 2026 saw additional approvals for Crypto.com and Stripe’s Bridge unit.

Pending applications as of April 1 include Revolut Bank US, Zerohash National Trust Bank, Morgan Stanley Digital Trust, Coinbase National Trust Company, and World Liberty Trust Company, which has ties to the Trump family.

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A new OCC final rule, effective April 1, 2026, clarifies that national trust banks may engage in operations of a trust company and activities related to non-fiduciary digital asset custody on a case-by-case basis. The rule removes one layer of legal ambiguity that had slowed institutional adoption.

A federal charter allows a firm to operate nationwide under a single regulatory framework, bypassing most state-by-state licensing requirements. For institutions that require regulated custody before allocating to digital assets, that distinction carries weight.

Like the others in line, the OCC will review the EDX Trust application for safety and soundness, capital adequacy, and compliance. The application includes a large volume of confidential exhibits, including the business plan and financial projections, for which EDX has requested FOIA protection.

FAQ 🔎

  • What is EDX Markets applying for? EDX Markets Holding Company filed an application with the OCC on March 25, 2026, to charter EDX Trust, National Association, as a de novo national trust bank in Chicago focused on institutional digital asset custody and settlement.
  • Who backs EDX Markets? Key investors include Citadel Securities, Fidelity Digital Assets, Charles Schwab, Virtu Financial, Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, and Hudson River Trading.
  • What services would EDX Trust offer? The proposed bank would provide fiduciary custody of digital assets and stablecoins, asset management, and settlement services exclusively for institutional clients via electronic channels.
  • Has the OCC approved the EDX Trust application? No decision has been announced; the OCC listed the application as pending on March 26, 2026, and will review it for safety, soundness, and compliance.
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Crypto

Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

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Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

When Strategy (MSTR 0.69%) sold a modest amount of Bitcoin earlier this year, it was a noteworthy development given that the company’s business has centered around buying up as much of the cryptocurrency as it can, and vowing to never sell. And it often boasts of being the largest corporate holder of the digital currency.

The company brushed off the sale of 32 Bitcoins, with management saying it simply wanted to “inoculate the market.” Well, now it appears that Strategy is doing much more than just that, and there could be more significant cryptocurrency sales in the future.

Image source: Getty Images.

Strategy unveils a Bitcoin monetization program

On June 29, Strategy released a framework going forward that it says will “enhance liquidity, preserve long-term Bitcoin exposure, and support long-term value creation for shareholders.” Among the notable components is its Bitcoin monetization program.

Within that program, the company says it may sell some of its cryptocurrency holdings for multiple reasons, including to fund a USD reserve, fund dividends or interest expense, or to fund repurchases of digital credit securities or common stock.

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While the company says it remains committed to Bitcoin for the long term and it’s the company’s “primary treasury reserve asset,” it’s a significant change of course for Strategy, which was previously heavily against ever selling the digital asset.

Strategy Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-0.69%) $-0.69

Current Price

$100.08

The stock is as risky and volatile as ever

Whether or not Strategy buys or sells Bitcoin doesn’t change the fact that this is a highly risky and speculative stock to own. While crypto fans may be disappointed in the company’s change in strategy, selling Bitcoin will likely not be enough to make the business any better or worse as an investment.

In just the past 12 months, the stock has plummeted a whopping 75% as volatility in digital assets has drastically weighed on its earnings, with the company incurring $12.8 billion in losses over the trailing 12 months, on revenue of $490 million.

That’s not likely to change significantly, even if Strategy offloads some of its crypto holdings, because with such a large exposure to Bitcoin, how the cryptocurrency performs will inevitably impact the company’s bottom line in a big way. This year, the leading cryptocurrency is down 28% as investor excitement around it has largely cooled off, which has proven disastrous for Strategy’s stock as well. And at this stage, there’s little reason to anticipate a recovery anytime soon.

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An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

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An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

Key Takeaways

Your WiFi can feel rock-solid at midnight and oddly sluggish by breakfast, even when you have not touched a single setting. The culprit is often outside your walls: a crowded slice of public radio spectrum where your router has to negotiate space with every nearby network, plus a grab bag of household gadgets that leak interference. Add peak-hours demand and the signal-blocking quirks of building materials and weather, and “slow internet” starts to look less like a billing issue and more like an invisible traffic problem you are forced to share.

When WiFi slows down without warning

One day your home WiFi feels snappy, the next it drags, even though your router hasn’t moved and your internet plan hasn’t changed. That swing is real, and it’s usually not your imagination or a “bad day” from your ISP. WiFi lives on shared airwaves, and those airwaves get crowded, noisy, and sometimes just plain finicky.

Think of your connection as a conversation in a busy room. Your laptop and router may be talking just fine, but the room itself can fill up fast with other chatter. What looks like a mystery slowdown is often the result of invisible competition and interference that changes hour by hour.

The battle of competing networks

Most homes still rely heavily on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi bands, which are unlicensed spectrum in the US. That “free for everyone” reality is convenient, but it also means your network shares space with your neighbors, their smart TVs, their work laptops, and every nearby router doing the same thing.

Congestion has a rhythm. During common work-from-home and school-from-home windows, especially 8-10 AM, and again in the evening 6-10 PM, more devices are streaming, video calling, syncing, and downloading updates. Even if you pay for fast broadband, your WiFi link can become the bottleneck when the local radio environment gets packed.

Interference inside your home

Your own house can sabotage you. A microwave is the classic culprit because it can leak noise near 2.4 GHz, exactly where many WiFi networks still operate. Older cordless phones, some baby monitors, and even dense clusters of Bluetooth gadgets can add more clutter, especially in smaller apartments where everything sits close together.

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Then there’s physics. Concrete, metal, and even water (think aquariums or thick pipes in walls) absorb and scatter radio signals. A router shoved behind a TV, tucked into a cabinet, or stuck in a far corner forces your devices to “hear” through more obstacles, lowering speeds and making dropouts more likely.

Weather, channels, and what you can do tonight

Environmental changes can matter too. Higher humidity and rain can slightly increase signal loss, and shifting temperatures can change how radio waves propagate around a neighborhood. You might never notice on its own, but paired with congestion it can tip a marginal connection into a frustrating one.

The 2.4 GHz band is also channel-limited. In the US there are 11 channels, but only 1, 6, and 11 don’t overlap. Many routers default to “auto channel,” so nearby networks can hop around trying to escape interference, sometimes creating instability. Practical fixes: prefer 5 GHz (or 6 GHz if you have WiFi 6E/7 gear), place the router centrally and higher up, and use a WiFi analyzer app to pick a less crowded channel instead of leaving it on auto.

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U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

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U.K.’s sanctions on cryptocurrency exchanges signal new focus on illicit digital financing – Compliance Week

Cryptocurrency exchanges believed to be financing Russia’s war in Ukraine have been sanctioned by the U.K. government in the first attempt to prevent evasion via “dark networks.” The move indicates a new focus on digital sanctions evasion, and compliance teams should expect these rules to develop further, potentially in the EU and other jurisdictions.


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Ruth Prickett graduated from Cambridge University with a BA hons in History and has specialized in business and finance journalism for the past 20 years. She was editor of Financial Management, the magazine…
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