The traditional banking sector has tried to slow the rise of institutions seeking charters as trust banks that will serve customers with digital assets, and Jonathan Gould, the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, said such hesitation would “risk reversing innovations.”
“The OCC hears almost daily from existing national banks about their own initiatives for exciting and innovative products and services,” he said at the Blockchain Association Policy Summit Monday in Washington. “All of this strengthens my confidence in the OCC’s ability to effectively supervise new entrants as well as new activities of existing banks in a fair and equitable manner.”
Gould said the process of applying for new charters — de novo banks — had nearly ground to a halt, but it remains at 14 applicants in the past year, many of them connected to digital assets and other financial technology services.
“There is simply no justification for treating digital assets any differently,” he said. “Furthermore, it is important that we not limit banks, including current national trust banks, to the technologies or businesses of the past.”
Gould’s agency oversees national banks and trusts and is the sole federal bank chartering authority. The OCC’s granting of charters to crypto firms had progressed slowly, with Anchorage Digital maintaining its status as the only OCC-licensed crypto bank for years. But last month, crypto bank Erebor was granted a provisional charter, the first under Gould’s watch.
Banking regulators under President Donald Trump’s administration have quickly reversed previous resistance and risk aversion directed at cryptobanking, and Gould said the OCC and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. together preparing rules to eliminate “reputational risk” from their supervisory rules.
Gould suggested that the financial system must “evolve from the telegraph to the blockchain.”
And he warned that his agency is reviewing banks’ debanking practices when it comes to cutting off services to crypto companies and their executives.
Read more: Coinbase Faces Flak from Traditional Bankers on Its Push for Trust Bank Charter
