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2 More U.S. Regulatory Dominos May Have Fallen for Crypto: OCC and CFPB

The crypto industry can likely look forward to two more agencies falling into line on its digital assets policy aims: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is one of the chief U.S. banking regulators, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where the lights are effectively being shut off.
The sector’s dicey relationship with U.S. banking can be expected to be further mitigated with the arrival of a new stand-in chief at the OCC, Rodney Hood, the crypto-friendly former chairman of the U.S. credit-union watchdog. As with other key financial oversight positions, President Donald Trump has tapped somebody who embraces cryptocurrency technology.
When running the credit-union agency in 2021, he’d said, «Cryptocurrency needs to be a part of the credit union system. If you don’t have it, it’s going to hurt your ability to compete with other financial services providers.» Substituting banks for credit unions in that sentiment could mean a rethinking of the OCC’s guidance to banks in 2021 that contributed to the rift between crypto firms and U.S. banking services.
The main thrust of the 2021 guidance from the OCC, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve was that banks shouldn’t get into crypto business without getting a formal sign-off from their regulators that the products or services could be handled without risking the institution. But the industry has argued that the resistance from the agencies went even farther than that and pushed banks away from digital assets entirely.
Trump’s new acting head of the FDIC, Travis Hill, has already said he’s ordered «a comprehensive review of all supervisory communications with banks that sought to offer crypto-related products or services» with the aim of opening a path for banks to engage with digital assets.
With the removal, also, of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s crypto accounting policy that effectively piled additional capital requirements on banks that wanted to handle crypto for clients, the banking impediments for digital assets may be falling away.
Read More: Crypto’s U.S. Banking Problem Likely Among the First Things Tackled Under Trump
At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog established after the global financial meltdown in 2008, is seeing its very existence under assault from Republicans who have long had issues with the agency’s fights with corporations. Trump installed his budget chief, Russ Vought, as the acting head of CFPB, and he’s moved to choke off its financing and cripple its operations.
A cheer went up from certain figures in crypto, including Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase. His company was a frequent subject of consumer complaints logged on the agency’s database — almost 8,000 at last count. Armstrong said in a post on social media site X that the agency «should be deleted, » calling it an unconstitutional «activist organization that has done enormous harm to the country.» (Though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that the CFPB’s operation doesn’t run afoul of the Constitution.)
Apart from what past leadership saw as its duty to protect consumers harmed by crypto firms, the agency was also seeking some additional policy authority over the industry. In January, its now-dismissed previous director pushed for a stablecoin regulation that the industry felt was an overreach that also threatened self-hosted wallets. But the proposal is unlikely to move further now that the agency’s activity has been frozen in the Trump administration.
The administration’s CFPB attack has drawn resistance from Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and Representative Maxine Waters, who occupies that same role at the House Financial Services Committee.
«Elon Musk and the guy who wrote Project 2025, Russ Vought, are trying to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,» Warren said in a video released on Monday, criticizing Trump’s administration for its pursuit of the consumer agency. «This is the payoff to the rich guys who invested in his campaign and who want to cheat families — and not have anybody around to stop them.»
Democrats intend to hold a rally at the CFPB later Monday afternoon.
Also on Monday, Waters released the text of the stablecoin bill she’d worked out with her previous Republican counterpart on the committee, former Chairman Patrick McHenry. This more bipartisan compromise effort, though, isn’t what’s currently on offer from Republicans. However, if both chambers eventually seek a bipartisan agreement on stablecoins that can comfortably pass muster in the Senate, it may have to address Democrats’ concern about giving the states a high level of supervisory authority over stablecoin issuers.
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Bitcoin Treasury Corp Boosts Holdings to 771 BTC, Plans Lending After $51M Buy

Bitcoin Treasury Corporation, a Canadian firm focused on bitcoin-related services, has wrapped up the first leg of its bitcoin buying campaign, adding 478.57 bitcoin (BTC) for CAD $70 million ($51 million) and boosting its total holdings to 771.37 BTC.
The accumulation works out to roughly 0.0000634 BTC per fully diluted share, the company said in a Friday press release. The Toronto-based firm plans to lend part of its BTC treasury to trading desks and other counterparties that need ready access to the cryptocurrency.
The approach mirrors that of numerous other companies adopting bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset.
Publicly-traded companies now hold a total of 841,715 BTC worth over $90 billion, according to Bitcointreasuries data, while private firms are estimated to hold 290,878 BTC worth over $31 billion.
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Ripple to Drop Cross-Appeal Against SEC, Ending Years-Long Legal Battle With SEC

The years-long legal battle between Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) appears to have finally come to an end, after Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced Friday that the company plans to drop its cross-appeal in the case.
“Ripple is dropping our cross appeal, and the SEC is expected to drop their appeal, as they’ve previously said,” Garlinghouse wrote on X. “We’re closing this chapter once and for all, and focusing on what’s most important – building the Internet of Value. Lock in.”
XRP climbed a modest 1.4% on the news.
The decision comes just a day after U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) rejected a joint request from the SEC and Ripple to approve a proposed settlement agreement that would slash Ripple’s civil penalty to $50 million and dissolve the permanent injunction against the firm. It was the latter that appeared to be the sticking point for Torres, who argued:
“Indeed, if the Court should not be concerned about Ripple violating the law, why do the parties want to eliminate the injunction that tells Ripple, ‘Follow the law’?,” Torres wrote. “When the Court imposed the injunction, it did so because it found a ‘reasonable probability’ that Ripple would continue violating federal securities laws. This has not changed, nor do the parties claim that it has.”
The joint request was the second such request slapped down by Torres, who rejected an earlier attempt in May citing both jurisdictional and procedural flaws. With the court showing no signs of budging on the terms of the settlement, Ripple’s decision to withdraw its cross-appeal ends the case by accepting the initially-imposed civil penalty of $125 million and presumably leaving the permanent injunction against the firm in place.
A spokesperson for Ripple Labs did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
The SEC first sued Ripple in 2020 under then-Chair Jay Clayton, alleging that the company violated federal securities laws through its sales of XRP. After years of litigation, Torres eventually concluded in a 2023 ruling that the sales of XRP to retail traders on public exchanges did not constitute securities transactions, but found that XRP sales to institutional investors did, thus violating securities laws.
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Bitvavo Secures a MiCA License From the Netherlands

Bitvavo is the latest crypto exchange to receive a Markets in Crypto Assets License from the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) to operate across the 30 nations in the European Economic Area.
Crypto companies have been applying for the licenses since the regulatory regime came into force in December last year. MiCA, which came into force in 2023 harmonizes rules across the European Union’s bloc of 27 nations plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.
The Netherlands also awarded licenses to four exchanges in December last year, as the rules took effect. Other exchanges like OKX, Crypto.com and Bitpanda secured a MiCA license from Malta. Kraken was awarded a license on Thursday from Ireland, Coinbase was awarded a MiCA license from Luxembourg in June and Bybit was awarded an EU license from Austria in May.
«This license provides clarity, confidence and enables Bitvavo to fulfil its ambition: to become the leading digital asset trading platform in Europe,» said Mark Nuvelstijn, CEO and co-founder of Bitvavo, in a statement.
Bitvavo, which is the largest player globally in the EUR spot market, already held registrations in France, Austria, Italy and Spain, in addition to the Netherlands, the company’s release said.
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