U.S. Regulator Pushes Back on Banks Fighting Crypto's Pursuit of Trust Charters

The traditional banking industry has sought to slow down the surge of institutions seeking charters as trust banks that will serve digital assets customers, and Jonathan Gould, the chief of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said such a hesitancy would "risk reversing innovations."

"The OCC is hearing from existing national banks, on a near daily basis, about their own initiatives for exciting and innovative products and services," he said at the Blockchain Association's policy summit on Monday in Washington. "All of this reinforces my confidence in the OCC’s ability to effectively supervise new entrants as well as new activities of existing banks in a fair and even-handed manner."

Gould said the process to apply for new charters — de novo banks — had shuddered nearly to a stop, but it's back up to 14 applicants in the past year, with many of them associated with digital assets and other financial technology services.

"There is simply no justification for considering digital assets differently," he said. "Additionally, it is important that we do not confine 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 only federal chartering authority for banks. The OCC's granting of charters to crypto firms had been slow to move forward, with Anchorage Digital holding its status as the only OCC-licensed crypto bank for years. But last month, crypto bank Erebor was granted a provisional charter, the first one under Gould's watch.

The banking regulator under the administration of President Donald Trump has rapidly reversed earlier resistance and risk aversion targeting crypto banking, and Gould said the OCC and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are together prepping rules to eliminate "reputation risk" from their supervisory regulations.

Gould suggested 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 severing services for crypto businesses and their executives.

Read More: Coinbase Faces Flak from Traditional Bankers on Its Push for Trust Bank Charter