Acting Comptroller of the Currency Calls for ‘Regulatory Perimeter’ in Crypto Markets

Financial authorities in the US are gearing up to assume a bigger role in the overseeing of the $1.6 trillion digital asset market.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Michael Hsu, new Acting Comptroller of the Currency, expressed hope that US officials would coordinate to form a “regulatory perimeter” in the crypto market.

“It really comes down to co-ordinating across the agencies…Just in talking to some of my peers, there is interest in co-ordinating a lot more of these things.”

The Financial Times notes that the new push for crypto regulation may have been foreshadowed by a meeting earlier this month between a “sprint team” made up of Hsu’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Hsu says of the group,

“It’s small and it’s senior. The idea is that time is of the essence and if it’s too big, that gets harder.”

Hsu describes himself as “a career public servant and a bank supervisor at my core,” but has also been vocally enthusiastic about the innovation in blockchain technologies and the crypto space.

According to him, the crypto space has the potential to “bring great promise” but “also risks”. Among potential risks, Hsu says that the new techniques brought forth in the industry could give rise to “a large and less regulated shadow banking system.”

News of Hsu’s comments come days after a Washington Post report outlining that officials from the Biden administration were reviewing “gaps” in crypto regulation.

“Administration officials are discussing whether guardrails on cryptocurrency can be imposed while still allowing investors to ‘Dogecoin to their heart’s content.’”

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