Major Banking institutions all across America now won’t be able to restrict the cryptocurrency industry from accessing banking services as a new rule has been proposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) that prevents them from discriminating against legal businesses or industries such as cryptocurrency.
Under the leadership of Coinbase’s former Chief Legal Officer Brian Brooks, the United States Treasury office OCC has proposed a new rule that aims at banning discrimination against legal industries. Through this regulatory proposal, the US regulator is seemingly putting an end to the unfair practices that take place against cryptocurrency investments or businesses.
As per the proposed rule, the national banks across the whole country would need to evaluate cryptocurrency businesses before blacklisting them. Banks could only refuse to provide financial services to those businesses who fail to come upon the risk-based standards and not under any kind of political pressure. If businesses possess risks banks are allowed to blacklist them. However, if customers or businesses are legalized and regulated then banks need to provide them with access to banking services.
The Treasury office says:
“While banks are not obligated to offer any particular financial service to their customers, they must make the services they do offer available to all customers except to the extent that risk factors particular to an individual customer dictate otherwise.”
On the basis of risk evaluations, the OCC said, there are still some banks in the country that refuse to provide financial services to clients or businesses.
Published in the Federal Register on Friday by the OCC, cryptocurrencies have not been mentioned directly by the Treasury Office. However, this regulatory proposal could prove in the favor of digital currency businesses. Crypto firms have made really hard efforts in the past for obtaining bank accounts in the United States. Cryptocurrency investments have been discriminated against by the authorities in the country. Only a small number of banks in the country have been providing the required banking services to cryptocurrency companies such as Signature Bank, Metropolitan Commercial Bank, and Silvergate Bank.
The newly-proposed rule has provided some relief to these digital currency firms. Now, like other businesses, all of the legal crypto businesses and traders would be able to leverage banking services in the country.
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