The Senate Bank Committee announced on 25 March that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will eliminate reputation risk as part of bank surveillance.
White House “Crypto Czar” David Sacks said The FDIC decision was an important correction and called it ‘a big victory for Crypto.
He added:
“In practice, these vague and subjective criteria were used to justify the debit of legal crypto companies through Operation ChokePoint 2.0. Bank criteria must be objective and quantitative, not based on the potential for unheard stories.”
Operation ChokePoint 2.0 was reportedly joint effort by supervisors under the administration of former President Joe Biden to prevent banks from dealing with the crypto industry. This included the refusal of banking services for crypto-related companies.
Sacks has also credited Senator Tim Scott to lead the legislative effort through the Firm ACT, which aims to codify the removal of reputation risk standards for all federal financial regulators.
The law requires that institutions cannot be denied access to financial services on the basis of the subjective perception of risk that is not associated with a violation of the law or regulations.
At the beginning of March, Scott criticized the use of reputation risks to disprove industries, call it a “armament of rules”.
After the OCC
The move comes five days after the office of the Currency (OCC) indicated It would stop investigating regulated institutions for reputation risk and removes references to the term from the supervisory manual and the guidance.
According to the OCC, regulators have never used reputation risks as a general justification for supervisory action. Nevertheless, its removal is intended to clarify that investigations should strictly focus on operational, legal and financial risk factors.
In an announcement of 20 March, acting competent Rodney E. Hood emphasized that the supervision of the OCC should be rooted in the risk management processes of banks, not in the public perception of certain business activities.
Win for crypto
Representative French Hill, vice -chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, repeated the sentiment of Sacks and called the move a positive development for industry in the US.
He added:
“Under the Biden administration, the FDIC wasted resources that focus on crypto companies instead of concentrating on their core mission. Now acting chairman Travis Hill and the Trump -Admin are working to rectify the ship.”
Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at Vaneck, celebrated The FDIC decision as a “big win against ChokePoint 2.0.” He added that the removal of reputation risk means that “few apologies for Debank Industries that they don’t like” means.
Nic Carter, partner at Castle Island Ventures and co-founder of Blockchain Data aggregator coinmetrics.io, said Reputation risk is “a circular technician with which bank regulators cut off any industry they don’t like.”
Galaxy Digital’s James Kibbie said It is very encouraging to see President Donald Trump’s government take steps to eliminate vague and subjective policy and to stop Operation ChokePoint 2.0. He added that the use of reputation risk ‘American innovation’ has considerably hindered.
