The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) at the U.S. Treasury Department will review the guidelines for cryptocurrencies. The announcement was made by Michael Hsu, the agency’s interim head.
Hsu will appear before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee on May 19. In a prepared speech, he wrote:
“The OCC is focused on encouraging important innovation. For example, we created the Office of Innovation, updated licensing rules for national banks and trust companies, and interpreted cryptocurrency storage services as part of the banking business. I’ve asked the staff to review those actions.”
Hsu said he intends to remain unbiased, but his main goal is to keep banks safe for consumers. He said these initiatives were developed without proper stakeholder coordination and were not part of a broad regulatory strategy.
Much of the OCC’s guidance on cryptocurrencies was issued under former agency head Brian Brooks. The regulator allowed crypto keys to be held by cryptocurrency wallets, stored collateral for Stablecoins and issued them.
Brooks left the OCC in January 2021 and now heads the U.S. division of Binance.
As a reminder, Paxos received a nationwide trust bank license from the OCC in April 2021.
In February, the regulator issued a similar license to Protego Trust Bank, and in January – custodian Anchorage.
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