Fed proposes rule to deal with crypto debanking by scrapping 'reputation risk'

• The U.S. Federal Reserve has proposed a rule that would set in stone its previous actions to toss out "reputation risk" as a factor in bank supervision, which is believed to have contributed to the debanking of crypto insiders and firms.
• The move, open for a 60-day public comment period, would stop supervisors from pushing bankers to sever ties with politically disfavored businesses.

Days after JPMorgan Chase & Co. admitted to debanking President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, the Federal Reserve seeks comments on its proposal that would stop government supervisors from pushing banks to sever ties with lawful customers based on their activities, including crypto companies.

"We have heard troubling cases of debanking — where supervisors use concerns about reputation risk to pressure financial institutions to debank customers because of their political views, religious beliefs or involvement in disfavored but lawful businesses," including cryptocurrency, said Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle W. Bowman.

"Discrimination by financial institutions on these bases is unlawful and does not have a role in the Federal Reserve's supervisory framework," she added.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, in its capacity as the supervisor of national banks, had already moved to cut reputational factors from its supervision last year, and the Federal Reserve had similarly announced in July that such risk would no longer be a part of its bank examinations, so this rule process would codify that move.

Crypto debanking has been well documented and freely acknowledged by banking regulators appointed by Trump, though new examples continue to emerge. In a response to a lawsuit filed last month by Trump and the Trump Organization, JPMorgan, the nation’s largest bank, said for the first time that it cut off more than 50 Trump accounts in February 2021. JPMorgan did not specify a reason for closing the accounts. On Nov. 23, 2025, Jack Mallers, CEO of crypto payments company Strike, wrote a social media post that immediately went viral, saying JPMorgan closed all his accounts without cause.

In a Jan. 26 memo to the Board of Governors, the Fed’s staff wrote that the board's proposal would “codify the removal of reputation risk from the Board’s supervisory programs” and prohibit the Fed from “encouraging or compelling” banks to deny or condition services to customers involved in “politically disfavored but lawful business activities.”

In the proposal, the Fed Board said it intends to include “permitted payment stablecoin issuers” within its definition of covered banking organizations after completing separate rulemakings, a move that could directly affect crypto-native firms seeking access to the banking system.

The Fed said comments on its proposal to remove reputation risk from its supervision of banks are due in 60 days from Feb. 23.

• The U.S. Department of the Treasury has sanctioned a Russian company and the individuals associated with it for dealing in stolen technology purchased with millions in cryptocurrency.
• The technology was designed by a defense contractor for use by the U.S. government, and one of the contractor's employees was said to have stolen it and sold it to Operation Zero, the target of the new sanctions.

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