The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued an interpretive letter Tuesday that would allow banks under its jurisdiction to hold small amounts of network tokens to test and process customer transactions.

The financial services firm based in Houston tried to buy a Chicago community bank three years ago as part of a plan to offer traditional banking and digital asset services on one platform. With Illinois state approval secured, it now awaits a decision from the Fed.

BNY estimates the market for stablecoins, tokenized deposits and other assets will reach a combined value of $3.6 trillion in four years, while Standard Chartered says the entire banking industry will soon be "tokenized." The trend is creating pressure to update strategies and technology.

The government shutdown is over, and Congress gets back to its regular business. For banks, the biggest-ticket issues are ongoing deliberations on raising deposit insurance and shaping a crypto market structure bill.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. acting Chair Travis Hill said Thursday morning that the agency's first proposed rules under recently passed stablecoin legislation should be published by the end of the year.

Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller said Wednesday that the central bank will soon issue a request for information on a nascent proposal to offer "skinny" payment accounts to eligible institutions and is aiming to finalize a rule by the fourth quarter of 2026.

The company appears to be the first nationally chartered bank to offer crypto trading and traditional banking in the same app.

Crypto is slowly but surely being integrated into the banking applications consumers trust and use every day. It's not the crypto revolution purists imagined, but it's very good news for consumers and bankers alike.

Custody is the foundation, but the real opportunity for TradFi lies in what comes next

In late 2021, Vast Bank, a regional bank operating throughout Northeast Oklahoma,

Institutional adoption of digital assets hinges on one foundational capability: secure custody

TradFi companies are making strategic investments in infrastructure to support the growth of tokenized assets

The Minneapolis-based bank is still exploring stablecoin options outside of custody services, but sees opportunity in trade finance, CEO Gunjan Kedia said at The Clearing House Annual Conference in New York Wednesday.

The ICBA opposed Coinbase's filing for a trust charter in a public letter as Comptroller Jonathan Gould defended the fintech charter process on Tuesday.

Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman said she wants banks to be competitive in the digital assets space, provided those operations are siloed from the traditional finance side of the business.

Findings from American Banker's On-Chain Finance Report show how market leaders view digital assets as a permanent fixture in the banking industry.

Reports that JPMorgan is planning to allow the use of crypto collateral against loans are good news for the crypto market. But Noelle Acheson argues that it's even better news for bank lending.

Anchorage Digital Bank, Custodia Bank and Erebor Bank could be among the first recipients of limited, special-purpose payment accounts recently floated by Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller. 

Stablecoins aren't fungible, and yet they're considered an on-chain substitute for money. Noelle Acheson argues that this is about more than a shift in definitions.