Days after a Sen. Elizabeth Warren said the Treasury Department’s recent spate of bank charter approvals for crypto firms may be illegal, industry leaders are forcefully pushing back on the characterization.
On Tuesday, the Digital Chamber, a top crypto industry trade group, implored the Trump Treasury Department to stand by its recent decision to begin granting national trust bank charters to crypto firms for the first time.
“We strongly encourage the OCC to defend these charter approvals and continue developing clear supervisory expectations for trust banks,” the group said in a letter to Jonathan Gould, the powerful head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
In Tuesday’s letter, the Digital Chamber claimed Congress’ decision to pass the GENIUS Act granted the OCC the authority to expand banking privileges to stablecoin businesses.
“It would be deeply incongruous for Congress, on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis, to establish a new category of federally regulated stablecoin issuer while the OCC stood by and declined to exercise its chartering authority,” Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone wrote.
The trade group also pushed back on arguments that stablecoin payment and lending activities fall outside the scope of a national trust company, in part by underscoring that approved companies like Coinbase and Ripple are not taking deposits insured by the FDIC.
