Michael Hsu, the acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, is sticking to his plan to keep most crypto activity out of the U.S. bank system.
U.S. regulators have kept banks from getting too involved in the cryptocurrency industry, and the acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency wants to keep things that way.
Michael Hsu was the acting head of the banking agency for most of President Joe Biden’s time in office. He doesn’t like cryptocurrencies and was quick to change the direction of the agency, which used to be the best place in the government for digital assets.
The OCC set up rules, which were then followed by the other banking regulators, that said any lender who wants to do anything with cryptocurrency has to ask permission and show that it will be completely safe.
He said this on Wednesday at a conference held by the Clearing House and Bank Policy Institute. This is one of the biggest conferences held every year to talk about banking policy. Hsu said that the collapse of Terra and the LUNA token in May “sparked contagion across cryptocurrencies,” which led to the failure of several crypto platforms, the closing of many exchanges, and big losses and layoffs at a number of publicly traded companies.
“On the other hand, the federally regulated banking system hasn’t been affected much,” he said. “I think at least some of this is due to the careful and cautious approach we took and plan to keep taking for the near future.”
The OCC, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are all talking with the U.S. government about how to keep track of stablecoins like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. The tokens, which are designed to keep their value stable by being tied to assets like the dollar, are the subject of ongoing legislative efforts, and federal agencies are also thinking about how to handle them as a threat to financial stability.
