Coinbase Trust Charter Is Final: What It Means for Miners
The Coinbase trust charter is now final. The OCC approved Coinbase National Trust Company, Decrypt and CoinDesk report, and Coinbase announced it on Monday, November 9. The blunt answer for miners: it is good for custody and bad for nobody, but it does not change your hashprice.
What the Coinbase trust charter is
The OCC gave Coinbase conditional approval in April. According to Coinbase, the final approval came “last Friday”. Neither outlet gives the exact date. The charter lets Coinbase run its institutional custody business, which holds digital assets for clients, under federal oversight instead of state rules. Decrypt notes that Coinbase’s earlier custody arm held a New York trust charter from 2018.
What it does not do
CoinDesk says this is not a full-service bank that takes deposits and makes loans. Decrypt quotes Coinbase saying in April that it would not take retail deposits or engage in fractional reserve banking. In other words, your savings account is not moving to Coinbase.
Who else has one, and who is fighting it
Decrypt says Circle won final approval in July for a trust bank that manages USDC reserves, and Ripple won final approval in October for its RLUSD stablecoin. Coinbase is the third. Block, Payward (Kraken) and World Liberty Financial are listed as other applicants, according to Decrypt.
It is not settled. CoinDesk reports the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC, arguing it overstepped its authority by granting trust charters to crypto firms. Decrypt adds that Senator Elizabeth Warren argues the approvals are illegal. We are not calling the outcome. A court loss would hit all three firms, not just Coinbase.
What the Coinbase trust charter means for miners
We think the effect on mining margins is close to zero. A charter does not add bitcoin demand today, and it does not touch hashrate or block rewards. The second-order effect is that regulated custody makes it easier for large funds to hold coins, which only helps price over time. We cannot put a number on that. Neither outlet reported a move in COIN stock from the news, and bitcoin sat near $74,500 and slightly lower on the day at the time of reading. Our bitcoin price prediction page has the daily range.
Miner math: bitcoin hashprice today
Here is the live maths on November 9. Bitcoin is $74,572 and the network is 959 EH/s, so hashprice is about $35.30 per petahash per day. That is what one PH/s of hashing earns before power.
| Machine | 5c/kWh | 8c/kWh | 12c/kWh | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antminer S19 (95 TH/s, 3250 W) | -$0.55 | -$2.89 | -$6.01 | 4.3c |
| Antminer S19k Pro (115 TH/s, 2645 W) | $0.89 | -$1.02 | -$3.56 | 6.4c |
| Antminer S19 XP (141 TH/s, 3010 W) | $1.37 | -$0.80 | -$3.69 | 6.9c |
| Antminer S21 Pro (234 TH/s, 3510 W) | $4.05 | $1.52 | -$1.85 | 9.8c |
Numbers are profit per day after electricity, at the three power prices shown. Break-even is the most you can pay per kilowatt-hour before the machine loses money. Specs are the manufacturer ratings; network data comes from mempool.space. Try your own power price in our free bitcoin mining profit calculator. See what these machines really sold for in our used ASIC miner price index. Want to run the same numbers on a machine you can buy today? See our used ASIC miners, or buy several at once through bulk lots.
If a custody-driven bid lifted bitcoin 5%: the break-even power price on an S19k Pro rises from 6.4 to 6.7 cents per kilowatt-hour. At 8 cents, daily profit goes from -$1.02 to -$0.82.
Read the second table as a “what if”, not a forecast. Even with a 5% lift, a machine that loses money at your power price still loses money. Work out your delivered power cost first. Our mining economics guides show how.
If your machines no longer pay, you can sell us your used miners. To buy, see all miners.
-Nick
ING Mining
This is general information, not financial advice. Crypto is volatile, and exchanges can fail. Please do your own research.
How this story was made: drafted with the help of AI tools from public sources, then edited by Nick Squires. See our editorial policy. Spot an error? Email ns@ingmining.com.