Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal says he can see multiple instances when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) told banks to stop offering crypto-related services.
In a new thread on the social media platform X, Grewal says that Coinbase uncovered the information after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request at the FDIC, asking the regulator to divulge what’s happening with the crypto crackdown on US banks.
“Slowly but surely, the picture is becoming clear. After we sued, FDIC finally started giving us information related to our FOIA request about the pause letters it sent to financial institutions as part of Operation Chokepoint 2.0.
In short, the contents are a shameful example of a government agency trying to cut off financial access to law-abiding American companies. So far we’ve uncovered more than 20 examples of the FDIC telling banks to ‘pause’ or ‘refrain from providing’ or ‘not proceed’ with offering crypto-banking services.
The public deserves transparency, not an agency that’s working behind a bureaucratic curtain.”
In one provided example, Eric T. Guyot, Assistant Regional Director of the FDIC’s Dallas Regional Office, sent a letter to the board of directors of an unnamed bank asking them to pause all crypto-related activities.
“The letter relates that the FDIC received the bank’s submission of information concerning a proposed new crypto-asset product, describes the nature of the product proposed by the bank, how it will be accessed by bank customers, and what the product offers.
The letter further states that the FDIC has not yet made certain determinations about that type of activity, and asks that the bank pause all crypto-asset activity.”
In June, the top US-based crypto exchange platform sued both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the FDIC, claiming that the regulatory bodies were attempting to cripple the digital assets industry.
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