cryptovibes.com
The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has issued out a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Friday. This notice could allow for “legal but disfavored” companies to gain fair access to banking services, with these companies struggling to build relationships with banks in the past.
Ending An Era Of Crypto Discrimination
Marco Santori stands as the Chief Legal Officer at the Kraken crypto exchange, and explained that this new Proposed Rulemaking could stand to benefit entities like independent ATM operators, oil and gas businesses, and, of course, crypto firms.
Santori explained that anyone who’s been in the crypto space for a considerable amount of time is perfectly aware of the greatest obstacle in front of it in terms of mainstream adoption: Complete lack of banking service access. He explained that Bitcoin was caught up in Operation Chokepoint back in its early days, and crypto at large is still getting caught up by it.
Pushing Out Undesirable But Legal Business
As for Operation Chokepoint, it was reportedly a program launched in the Obama-Era, and had put a sizable amount of strain between banks and “legal but disfavored” industries.
During this Operation, the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals stated that the US Department of Justice and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation had both allegedly started to pressure financial institutions. These legal entities coerced financial institutions to cut financial services from various legally operating, licensed industries.
Now, however, it seems that the OCC is keen on closing this era of strained relationships between banks and crypto firms, with Santori explaining that the bill itself reads like a bank customer’s basic bill of rights, one that doesn’t exist already, sad as it is.
US Potentially Gaining Basic Banking Rights
In the proposed rule, a bank is mandated to make every financial service it has to offer available to each individual, providing fair access to financial services. Furthermore, the new role mandates that these services be served on equal terms to everyone, and cannot deny anyone financial services. Of course, the exception stands if a person has shown a documented and quantified failure to meet impartial risk-based quantitative standards, which had been established in advance.
Santori did make note, however, that this new proposed rule will only be applied to large banks. Santori described this as sensible, looking at the relative compliance costs and who the culprits in question are. Santori did note, however, that the rule never demands that a bank enter a line of business it isn’t prepared for.