U.S. Consultant Maxine Waters, who chairs the highly effective Home Monetary Companies Committee, desires President-elect Joe Biden to rescind or monitor all the cryptocurrency-related steering issued by the Workplace of the Comptroller of the Foreign money (OCC).
It additionally comes days after those self same members launched a invoice that may require stablecoin issuers to hunt financial institution charters and safe regulatory approval to situation tokens,
On this mild, Waters’ motion is sure to be seen as a part of a coordinated effort to impose extra extreme regulatory oversight on stablecoins, if not all cryptocurrencies, as a method to undo what she termed the harms of President Donald Trump’s administration.
“As you start to hold out the mandate given to you by the American individuals to revive belief within the federal authorities, I want to spotlight a number of areas the place you and your group ought to instantly reverse the actions of your predecessors,” she wrote.
In her letter, Waters (D-Calif.) known as on Biden to rescind steering by the OCC that nationwide banks might maintain stablecoin reserves as a service to financial institution clients.
Every of those suggestions would undo work performed by Brian Brooks, the Appearing Comptroller of the Foreign money. Brooks was lately nominated to serve a full five-year time period by Trump.
“Your appointed officers on the Workplace of the Comptroller of the Foreign money (OCC) should additionally not assume, as their predecessors have, {that a} legislation Congress handed over 150 years in the past one way or the other provides, them authority to supply a nationwide financial institution constitution to non-bank fintech or fee firms,” she wrote.
Beneath a bit on monetary stability, Waters wrote that the Monetary Stability Oversight Council and Workplace of Monetary Analysis ought to publish their evaluation on developments and the present regulatory framework round digital belongings and distributed ledger know-how.
If Waters and the three Democratic sponsors of the invoice – Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Jesús “Chuy” García (D-In poor health.) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) – are certainly intent on rolling again the OCC’s pro-crypto steering as a method to undo what they understand as Trump’s legacy, an assertion earlier Friday by Brooks that “we’re very targeted on not killing (crypto innovation)” might show hole.
The chairman finds himself in an unenviable place. On the one facet, the outgoing administration is rumored to be planning to situation self-hosted pockets regulation, a plan that already has the crypto business up in arms. Now, the transfer by Waters together with the Democratic representatives might bode poorly for the crypto area within the U.S., significantly ought to the GOP lose the Georgia Senate runoff and thus management of the Senate.
(UPDATE Dec. 5, 2020, 01:45 UTC): Rewrites all through, provides context of prior actions by Home members.
