Former Bitfury Exec Gould Confirmed to Take Over U.S. Banking Agency OCC

The U.S. Senate confirmed Jonathan Gould, a former senior executive at a blockchain technology company, to take over the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as the banking agency leans into President Donald Trump's directives to ease the regulatory path for the crypto sector.

The Senate approved Gould in a 50-45 vote on Thursday, further cementing the financial regulatory roster established by Trump. The former senior OCC official will return to run the agency that oversees national banks, which has a mixed history on digital assets issues.

In his previous tenure at the OCC, Gould rose to the role of senior deputy comptroller and chief counsel during the previous administration, including a stint under Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks — a former crypto exec who sought to open the doors to digital assets businesses seeking to enter the banking sphere, including shepherding Anchorage Digital to the first crypto bank charter. Brooks departed and ran Bitfury, where Gould also went to work as chief legal officer.

After Brooks, the OCC under former President Joe Biden took a more cautious approach to crypto, joining other U.S. banking regulators — the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. — in issuing restrictive guidance to banks seeking to do digital assets business. The regulators are also accused by the industry of getting insiders and businesses cut off from U.S. banking services.

Under the Trump administration, the crypto resistance from the OCC and others has now been reversed.

Read More: Fed Joins OCC, FDIC in Withdrawing Crypto Warnings for U.S. Bank

Gould had a confirmation hearing in April, alongside Paul Atkins, who was confirmed earlier to take over the Securities and Exchange Commission. At the hearing, the lawmakers hardly delved into crypto matters, so Gould's specific plans for crypto policies at the OCC remain unclear once he's formally sworn in, though he'd testified that he'd "absolutely" address the situation in which industry personnel faced "debanking."