U.S. Banking Regulators Issue Crypto ‘Safekeeping’ Statement, Not Pushing New Policy

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By Jesse Hamilton|Edited by Cheyenne Ligon

Jul 14, 2025, 7:04 p.m.

U.S. Federal Reserve Board in Washington (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk)
  • The Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a statement today reminding bankers that there are rules to follow with the custody of digital assets.
  • The U.S. bank regulators have had a dicey history with the crypto industry, but they’ve recently shifted their positions toward less resistance of the financial movement.

The Federal Reserve and other U.S. banking agencies issued another statement on the proper handling of crypto assets on Monday, outlining the appropriate policies that need to be followed for banks engaging in the “safekeeping” of customers’ digital assets.

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The statement sent out from the Fed, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency made clear that these latest considerations do not represent a new policy push.

The trio of agencies set out to clarify that properly keeping such assets involves “controlling the cryptographic keys associated with the crypto-asset in a manner that complies with applicable laws and regulations.”

Apart from cryptographic key management, the seven-page memo outlined some of the demands of money-laundering controls, risk-management oversight, software knowledge and audits.

“This statement discusses how existing laws, regulations and risk-management principles apply to this activity, and does not create any new supervisory expectations,” the agencies said.

The U.S. banking regulators have had a tumultuous relationship with the digital assets space, having issued guidance during the previous administration of President Joe Biden that constrained bankers from easily doing business with crypto firms. But the regulators under President Donald Trump have rolled back that guidance.

The latest sentiments from the agencies come at the start of the U.S. House of Representatives’ self-described Crypto Week in which the lawmakers are expected to approve multiple crypto bills in an effort toward establishing formal U.S. digital assets regulations.

Read More: Former Bitfury Exec Gould Confirmed to Take Over U.S. Banking Agency OCC

Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk’s deputy managing editor on the Global Policy and Regulation team, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022, he worked for more than a decade covering Wall Street regulation at Bloomberg News and Businessweek, writing about the early whisperings among federal agencies trying to decide what to do about crypto. He’s won several national honors in his reporting career, including from his time as a war correspondent in Iraq and as a police reporter for newspapers. Jesse is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he studied journalism and history. He has no crypto holdings.

Jesse Hamilton

 

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