A forty-year-old Texas bank is entering the national stage to challenge Wall Street’s efforts to seize the digital asset industry.
United Texas Bank (UTB) secured approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to convert from a state-chartered financial institution to a nationally chartered bank on May 15, Scott Beck, president and CEO of the firm, told CoinDesk on Wednesday.
The conversion move, Beck added, is to position his crypto-friendly bank as the primary bridge between the cryptocurrency industry and traditional financial institutions and to provide digital asset services, which he said UTB has fully provided for years while “Wall Street continues to tiptoe.”
The conversion granted by the OCC came with two conditions, which Beck said have now been met. “These conditions were met today, May 27,” he said. Since 2024, UTB has operated under a consent order with the Federal Reserve, which was related to its Bank Secrecy Act and compliance infrastructure.
“Instead of seeing it as a setback, we treated it as a mandate to build something extraordinary, and we did. The result is UTB PRISM SENTINAL, our proprietary BSA/AML compliance platform,” he said.
The milestone makes UTB one of the first banks in the United States to successfully complete an OCC conversion since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act 15 years ago, Beck added. He said the conversion also uniquely positions UTB as a bridge between crypto firms worldwide to the US banking system, access that very few banks today are willing to provide.
“The concept of United Texas Bank is a centralized value center,” said the chairman of UTB, a bank he said is unknown nationally but highly sought after by crypto firms.
“If you’re a digital asset player, you can’t get an account at a Bank of America or a Citibank. You can come to United Texas Bank and basically have full access to the US dollar,” he said, adding that his bank has been providing services to reputable crypto firms for about five years, handling over $120 billion in transactions for them annually.
Standing with the giants
Beck explained that the strategic OCC conversion puts the Dallas-based institution on par with money center giants like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, giving it identical federal licensing, full fiduciary powers and direct access to the Federal Reserve’s wire and ACH systems, while retaining the FDIC insurance it had.
But unlike traditional Wall Street firms beginning to explore the crypto ecosystem, UTB already “supports a massive portion of global crypto liquidity, clearing $10 billion per month in US dollar volume for foreign banks, over-the-counter (OTC) desks and major exchanges.
UTB is not alone in the race for a competitive place within the growing crypto sector in the US. Last week, Minnesota signed new rules that allow local banks to fight Wall Street for cryptocurrency profits. State banks and credit unions teamed up with lawmakers to push legislation authorizing them to provide crypto custody services to their customers.
For UTB, the conversion marks an ambitious operational turning point, added Beck. While crypto startups have spent years chasing limited, fiduciary charters that exclude them from the Federal Reserve’s payment rails, UTB’s national charter bypasses those restrictions entirely.
First in the USA
“We are the first to transition to the national banking phase with full access to the Federal Reserve for wires and ACH,” Beck added.
By moving away from the Texas Department of Banking and placing itself directly under the OCC, UTB aligned its corporate structure with the executive branch of the federal government, protecting its clients from the fractured regulatory landscape that historically stifled crypto firms, Beck said.
To further capitalize on its federal upgrade, the bank is launching UTB Atomic, an artificial intelligence-powered, real-time payments network designed to bring back the 24/7 liquidity infrastructure that collapsed when Silvergate and Signature Bank did.
In a 24/7 crypto market, traditional bank closures create massive settlement bottlenecks for institutional traders operating at 3:00. UTB Atomic solves this by enabling instant off-balance clearing between institutional clients, while a parallel AI network, UTB Prism Sentinel, continuously performs real-time blockchain monitoring to neutralize compliance risks, Beck explained.
“The biggest issue facing the larger financial institutions is the ability to actually track what’s happening as the payments come through,” Beck said, adding that the system is purpose-built to navigate upcoming regulatory hurdles like the federal stablecoin framework under the GENIUS Act and the Clarity Act.
With a comprehensive digital asset custody department and full-service trust department scheduled to launch this summer, UTB aims to bridge the gap between traditional finance and crypto and position itself as the original financial plumbing for the next era of global trade, Beck said.
