The head of the U.S Office of the Comptroller of Currency, or the OCC, is Brian Brooks, who had also served as a former executive for the Coinbase exchange. Recently, multiple congress members sent a letter to the OCC and expressed their concerns over the heavy focus of the leadership on crypto. Congress member hailing from Massachusetts, Stephen Lynch and the Congress member hailing from Michigan, Rashida Tlaib sent the letter. There are also signatures of some other members of the Congress on the letter, which include California’s Barbara Lee, New Mexico’s Deb Haaland, another Congress member from Massachusetts, Ayanna Presley and from Illinois, Jesus Garcia.
As far as the letter is concerned, it shed some light on the recent ‘unilateral’ actions that had been taken by the OCC in the digital finances space. This includes the announcement made about introducing a special purpose ‘Payments’ charter, along with some interpretive letters regarding crypto custody. This was revealed in a media statement that was made by Tlaib a couple of days ago. During the year, there were a number of key decisions made within the crypto industry in regard to regulatory clarity. This was partly because of Brooks leading the OCC.
Back in July, they had given regulatory approval for federally chartered banks to enable crypto custodianship. Similarly, they had given another approval in September for such banks to also launch stablecoin reserve custody. In the letter sent by the Congress members, the limited authority of the OCC was discussed and the Comptroller was urged to reconsider the impact that would be seen in crypto legislation due to this unilateral approach. Instead, it was suggested in the letter that the OCC should work on collaborating with other regulators when it comes to dealing with these issues, including Congress itself.
It was claimed in the statement that the clarity issued by the OCC back in September had not done any good and had instead hurt innovation. In fact, it had ended up facilitating a whole new category of institutions that mostly benefits large and established fintech companies. Therefore, the letter stated that huge tech companies, such as Facebook would be given the green light to enter the payments arena, which raises a lot of problems in the eyes of the legislators. This year, almost the entire world has seen the respective regulators in different countries delve deeper into the crypto space than ever before, particularly when it comes to bringing about criminal charges or achieving clarity.
After receiving the letter by members of the Congress, the press team of Brian Brooks has not made any statement about this matter. Nonetheless, it is apparent that the man seems to have stepped on some toes, especially given his former position with a crypto exchange. It cannot be denied that the United States needs to significantly give its crypto legislation a boost if they want to keep up with China, as the latter is already on the verge of making its own CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) widely available.
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