U.S. OCC Acting Comptroller: Reviewing all digital asset guidance issued last year

Michael Hsu, acting comptroller of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), said in a virtual press conference on Wednesday that the OCC is reviewing all digital asset guidance issued last year, including interpretative guidance, conditional trust charters and other issues related to digital assets.

“I’ve instructed the team to put everything on the table, let’s consider everything, like the constraints of the decisions that have been made, what has been proposed, what the progress is currently… so you know, it’s basically encouraging my team to think broadly about everything while being pragmatic,” he said.

Hsu said the review includes conditional state trust licenses issued to some crypto firms and applications for such licenses by other firms. The ultimate goal is to determine an “overall strategy” for digital assets.

It was this view, he said, that inspired an interagency sprint group comprised of members of the OCC, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

“The instruction we gave the team was to first agree on terminology,” Hsu said. “Definitions can help on a cross-departmental basis in terms of precision.”

Once the group creates a common set of definitions, it can then move on to identifying risks in the digital asset industry and determining next steps around regulation.

Hsu expressed hope that different regulators that may have jurisdiction over digital assets can work together to determine the most favorable regulatory framework, including oversight of trading platforms.