The crypto industry can likely look forward to two more agencies falling into line on its digital assets policy aims: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is one of the chief U.S. banking regulators, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where the lights are effectively being shut off.The sector’s dicey relationship with U.S. banking can be expected to be further mitigated with the arrival of a new stand-in chief at the OCC, Rodney Hood, the crypto-friendly former chairman of the U.S. credit-union watchdog. As with other key financial oversight positions, President Donald Trump has tapped somebody who embraces cryptocurrency technology.When running the credit-union agency in 2021, he’d said, “Cryptocurrency needs to be a part of the credit union system. If you don’t have it, it’s going to hurt your ability to compete with other financial services providers.” Substituting banks for credit unions in that sentiment could mean a rethinking of the OCC’s guidance to banks in 2021 that contributed to the rift between crypto firms and U.S. banking services.The main thrust of the 2021 guidance from the OCC, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve was that banks shouldn’t get into crypto business without getting a formal sign-off from their regulators that the products or services could be handled without risking the institution. But the industry has argued that the resistance from the agencies went even farther than that and pushed banks away from digital assets entirely.Trump’s new acting head of the FDIC, Travis Hill, has already said he’s ordered “a comprehensive review of all supervisory communications with banks that sought to offer crypto-related products or services” with the aim of opening a path for banks to engage with digital assets.With the removal, also, of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s crypto accounting policy that effectively piled additional capital requirements on banks that wanted to handle crypto for clients, the banking impediments for digital assets may be falling away.Read More: Crypto’s U.S. Banking Problem Likely Among the First Things Tackled Under TrumpAt the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog established after the global financial meltdown in 2008, is seeing its very existence under assault from Republicans who have long had issues with the agency’s fights with corporations. Trump installed his budget chief, Russ Vought, as the acting head of CFPB, and he’s moved to choke off its financing and cripple its operations.A cheer went up from certain figures in crypto, including Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase. His company was a frequent subject of consumer complaints logged on the agency’s database — almost 8,000 at last count. Armstrong said in a post on social media site X that the agency “should be deleted,” calling it an unconstitutional “activist organization that has done enormous harm to the country.” (Though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that
Mar. Feb 11th, 2025
