- Key insight: Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould says the agency's goal is to widen banks' access to new technologies, including stablecoins, to keep them relevant in a dynamic and changing financial landscape.
- Supporting data: Gould said the agency wants to ease barriers for smaller firms to avoid a two-tier system, where large banks dominate novel technology spaces.
- Forward look: The OCC's stablecoin implementation rule is out for public comment and will be further refined based on public feedback.
NEW YORK — Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said the agency's stablecoin regulatory framework is designed to broaden smaller banks' ability to compete in offering new technologies.
Speaking to a crowd at Blockworks' Digital Asset Summit Tuesday morning, Gould said he wants to avoid allowing emerging technologies to concentrate only among the largest institutions. While regulators are often more comfortable with the scale, resources and risk systems at megabanks, he said the OCC is looking to level the playing field for small banks in the shifting landscape of digital assets.
"We want to make sure that all banks or parties that are interested in engaging in payment stablecoin activities that are under OCC jurisdiction have an opportunity to do so," Gould said during the fireside chat, reflecting on the recently proposed
Gould
In his Tuesday fireside chat, Gould said the agency is aiming to remove unnecessary barriers while maintaining guardrails. Gould has said the proposal aims to apply the same rules to institutions engaging in the same activities, moving away from what he says was a reflexive crypto-skepticism in the previous administration. A side-effect of this stance, he argues, is a tiered system that advantages larger institutions.
"I prefer not to create any incentives that promote or create a two-tier system, where only the largest players can take advantage of some new technology, but everybody else can't do it — even though it's legally permissible for them to take advantage," Gould said. So we're going to try very hard to make sure that the benefits of payment, stablecoin activities, at least for those who want to participate in them, are recognized across as broad a sector of the banking system as possible, while obviously we as supervisors are very focused on mitigating any potential downside risks."
Gould continued by arguing the rigid distinctions between banks and their competitors — fintechs, nonbanks and others — should converge over time. The regulatory task, as he sees it, is not to preserve boundaries but to ensure banks remain relevant.
"These kinds of mutually exclusive frameworks of banks versus non banks … or banks versus fintechs, or banks versus crypto … my suspicion, and I think we've seen this more now in the past, is that over time, these things converge," Gould said. "So while I want to make sure that banks remain relevant over time, one of the ways that I can do that is by adjusting the regulatory and supervisory framework that applies to the banking system such that more and more activities that are legally permissible can be done in banks in ways that aren't treated in a punitive fashion by regulators."
