Tag: Occ

OCC Issues Update to Organize a Virtual Innovation Office Hours

by Blockchain News

The Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC) in Washington, DC has released an update on how the Fintech solution week will be organized by its representatives.

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According to a newsroom update held by OCC, two days of virtual Innovation Hours will be organized in December 2022 which will begin on the 14th and close by the 15th. The purpose of the meeting will be to stimulate and promote new ideas in the federal banking sector.

Any interested party is expected to register for a session on the 18th of November, 2022. They will be asked to submit any topic that fancies their interest as related to the financial service and the digital ecosystem. The OCC will thereafter follow up with them by providing them with details of the meeting time and dates after accepting their request.

OCC further explained what Office Hours is all about. According to the report, Office Hours are physical meetings that will be organized by staff that are representing the OCC Office of Innovation. 

These meetings are expected to last not more than one hour. The focus of these meetings will be to discuss Fintech solutions in the financial sector, a move that may also engrain crypto and blockchain-related innovations.

New products and services in the financial industry will also be studied. Furthermore, partnerships with other banks and Fintech corporations will also be looked into. 

OCC and the FinTech Industry

The Office Hours being organized by OCC are not the first attempt for them to promote the Fintech economy. In January Michael J.Hsu also gave remarks on “the future of crypto assets and regulation.” 

He believes that in the crypto space, stablecoins play an intermediary between fiat and crypto and act as a medium of exchange within crypto trading platforms. He also believed they play an important role in promoting and supporting fast growth in Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

The OCC announced the launch of the Office of Financial Technology which will begin early next year. According to them, the creation of the office is aimed at bringing innovation to the banking sector. 

Acting Comptroller Michael J. Hsu gave a statement that “the banking sector is changing rapidly and partnerships between banks and the FinTech industry have been forecasted to grow in number and complexity.” 

He further explained that the office will allow us to be more agile and promote responsible innovation, which is in line with our mission.

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OCC Chief Calls for Collaboration of Federal Entities in Crypto Regulation

by Dailyhodl

The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) says that federal authorities must cooperate in order to properly regulate the crypto industry.

In a recent speech, Acting Comptroller of Currency Michael Hsu says that as crypto platforms and adoption grow, so do the risks associated with them.

He says the risks create a need for multi-agency collaboration as no single entity is able to accurately regulate them.

“Large crypto intermediaries today may have multiple subsidiaries subject to different regulators, but no one regulator is able to understand how the firm as a whole operates, how much risk it is taking, and whether it is operating in a safe, sound, and fair manner.

As large crypto intermediaries expand, engage in a wider range of activities and risk-taking, and deepen their interconnectedness with the traditional financial system, the risks from this lack of comprehensive consolidated supervision will increase, as will the need for interagency collaboration and coordination.”

Hsu points to previous initiatives of interagency cooperation in order to regulate the digital asset market. Last year, the OCC teamed up with the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to focus on bank-related crypto policies.

“The interagency team developed a common vocabulary, identified key risks related to crypto activity engagement by banks, and laid out a roadmap for areas and activities where supervisory clarity is most warranted. At the top of the list is crypto custody, which (like stablecoins) is foundational to crypto operating at scale safely.

While banks and trust companies have a long and successful history of custodying and safeguarding assets, the technology underlying crypto and the associated governance with certain tokens present a host of novel issues warranting careful analysis and consideration.”

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Acting OCC Comptroller Urges Regulators to Collaborate with Crypto Intermediaries

by Blockchain News

Despite incessant backlash from regulators in the United States, the adoption and growth of digital currencies have been steady over the past few years.

Considering this position, Michael J. Hsu, the Acting Comptroller of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has advocated that regulators should collaborate with major crypto intermediaries in order to get a grasp of how the ecosystem functions.

Michael made this advocacy while speaking at the Transatlantic Finance Forum on the topic of “The Future of Crypto-Assets and Regulation,” Michael pointed out that crypto exchanges, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and the metaverse are some of the major ways people are gradually getting to associated with the digital currency ecosystem at the moment. 

“The mainstreaming of crypto has occurred despite regulatory and legal uncertainty, and a series of scams, hacks, and other disruptive events. For financial regulators like me, this presents a host of questions. Where should regulatory attention be focused? What should be done? By whom? And why?” he said, based on an excerpt from his speech.

With the growing popularity of this nascent industry, many banks and financial institutions are now pushing for ways to get involved in the space, a move that Michael said should be considered only when the banks involved have developed the necessary capabilities to go into crypto.

Additionally, the OCC boss pointed out that based on the frail regulatory position of the industry, it can be easy to lose trust in digital currencies, should a situation arise where liquidity is hampered. While noting the good positioning of banks to keep trust, Michael advocated a careful analysis of the tech supporting the crypto ecosystem carefully.

“While banks and trust companies have a long and successful history of custodying and safeguarding assets, the technology underlying crypto and the associated governance with certain tokens present a host of novel issues warranting careful analysis and consideration,” he concluded. 

Michael’s comments come on the back of crypto CEOs testifying before the US Congress last year as both parties seek to help contribute to the regulation of the industry.

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Voyager Digital Taps Former OCC Boss Brian Brooks as Director

by Blockchain News

Voyager Digital, one of the publicly traded cryptocurrency platforms in the United States, has tapped the services of Brian Brooks, the current Chief Executive Officer of Bitfury, as one of its non-Executive Directors.

The appointment was announced on Monday, and per the company, Brooks’ works start immediately.

“On behalf of the Board, I welcome Brian to the Board as an independent, non-executive Director.” said Philip Eytan, Chairman of Voyager Digital, “Brian’s extensive background as an executive at major crypto companies and as the leader of important government regulatory initiatives in the crypto space will help propel the growth of digital assets and Voyager’s business.”

Brooks’ appointment was informed by the wealth of experience he has gathered in his professional career while serving as the Comptroller of the Currency under former President Donald Trump’s administration. Following his departure from the OCC, Brooks has taken on roles in the digital currency ecosystem, and this, to an extent, has broadened his perspective the more in the space.

Brooks is known for his proactiveness in helping to advance the growth of the nascent digital currency ecosystem. Under his reign at the OCC, the regulator permitted Federally Chartered Banks to keep custody of stablecoins, one of the first and crucial gestures of openness to the crypto ecosystem from a Federal Agency.

The recognition of Brooks as a crypto advocate is duly recognized across the entire digital currency ecosystem as he represented Bitfury in the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services to discuss cryptocurrencies. The ascension of Brian Brooks mimics that of Jay Clayton, the former Chairman of Security and Exchange Commission. He was appointed earlier in the year as an Advisor with One River Digital Asset Management company.

With the appointment of Brooks and Clayton making headlines, it is becoming evident that digital currency platforms are prioritizing the integration of former regulators in preparation for the future of the ecosystem.

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US Regulator Says Banks Must Meet Certain Conditions To Deal in Cryptocurrency

by Dailyhodl

The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is outlining the conditions that national banks and federal savings associations must meet before engaging in specified cryptocurrency activities.

The regulator says that national banks and federal thrift institutions must “demonstrate that they have adequate controls in place before they can engage in certain cryptocurrency, distributed ledger and stablecoin activities.”

The OCC is also offering clarity on matters previously addressed in interpretive letters issued in 2020 and early 2021.

According to the regulator, banks can provide cryptocurrency custody services, hold dollar deposits that back stablecoins, act as nodes for distributed ledgers to verify payments and engage in particular stablecoin activities to facilitate payments on blockchain networks after notifying their supervisory office.

“Today’s letter clarifies that the activities addressed in the previous interpretive letters may be conducted after a bank notifies its supervisory office of its intent to engage in the activities and after a bank receives written notification of the supervisory office’s non-objection. The bank should not engage in the activity until it receives a non-objection from its supervisory office.”

The Acting Comptroller of the Currency, Michael J. Hsu, says that the measures outlined are to ensure financial institutions under the OCC’s regulatory ambit operate safely and responsibly.

“Because many of these technologies and products present novel risks, banks must be able to demonstrate that they have appropriate risk management systems and controls in place to conduct them safely. This will provide assurance that crypto-asset activities taking place inside of the federal regulatory perimeter are being conducted responsibly.”

Last month, a report indicated that US regulators were partnering to come up with clearer rules, such as enabling banks to facilitate crypto trading for their clients and allowing them to hold crypto assets in their balance sheets.

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Senator pressures OCC nominee over missing Marxism thesis from Moscow Uni

by Cointelegraph

Pat Toomey, a Republican member of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, is attempting to pressure the nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) into handing over her 1989 university honors thesis about Karl Marx.

The Biden administration formally nominated Kazakh-born attorney Saule Omarova — who has been characterized by critics as both anti-bank and anti-crypto — to head the financial regulator on Sept. 29. In vague echoes of McCarthyism, Toomey believes the thesis may show that Omarova has sympathies toward Marxist views.

While Omarova has lived in the US since 1991 and previously served as an advisor to George W. Bush, she previously attended Moscow State University during 1988 and 1989 on The Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship.

In an open letter to Omarova published on Oct. 5, Toomey claimed that she had deleted reference to her thesis “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital” from her current resume with Cornell Law School, adding that the paper was featured on her resume in April 2017.

The archived resume indicates that the paper was written as part of Omarova’s diploma with honors in philosophy. Toomey states he is requesting the document so that the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs can “fully assess the fitness of individuals to serve in Senate-confirmed executive and independent agency positions.”

He said committee staff had first requested the document from Omarova in September but, “we have not received any assurances that the Committee would receive a copy of the paper in a timely fashion.”

The Biden administration has received criticism over Omarova’s nomination, with detractors pointing to her 2020 statements cheering for lawmakers to “effectively end banking as we know it.” Omarova has also characterized cryptocurrency as a symptom of the existing “dysfunctional financial system.”

However, Democrats have praised Biden’s pick for the nomination, with Senator Elizabeth Warren describing Omarova as “an excellent choice to oversee and regulate the activities of our nation’s largest banks.”

Speaking to the committee on Oct. 5, Toomey described Omarova as an extreme “radical” whose recent policy prescriptions have included state-directed pricing for wages and good, nationalizing the retail banking industry, and an overall “aversion to anything like free market capitalism.” He continued:

“In 2019, she tweeted, ‘say what you will about the old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always know best […] Ms. Omarova clearly knows her views are far outside of the mainstream.”

Senator Ted Cruz also took aim at Omarova of the potential threat she may pose to crypto, tweeting: “Not only is Saule Omarova, Biden’s pick to lead the OCC, a threat to our traditional economy, she also wants to regulate crypto into oblivion. Crypto faces future-defining government regulations. This nomination needs to be stopped.”