Joint Trades Letter to the President's Working Group on Digital Assets

Dear Mr. Sacks:

We write to thank you and the members of the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets for the ongoing work to promote U.S. leadership on digital assets. We appreciate the opportunity to provide further input for consideration. Our letter of February 20 focused on identifying the guidance, policies, and other documents issued by the federal banking agencies (the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) that "affect the digital asset sector," specifically, banks’ ability to meaningfully engage in digital asset-related activity and otherwise support the digital asset sector. The purpose of that initial letter was to highlight banks' concerns regarding that guidance as the PWG works to fulfill its responsibilities set forth in the President’s Executive Order on Digital Asset Markets. We appreciate the important steps that each of the federal banking agencies has since taken consistent with the recommendations we made in our prior letter. We are now writing to highlight the remaining actions the federal banking agencies should take as outlined in that letter and to provide more detailed recommendations for the PWG's consideration to help advance banks’ ability to engage in digital assetactivities, which will, in turn, help elevate the United States' leadership role in the digital asset ecosystem and promote American competitiveness.

The guidance that we highlighted in our prior letter stifled banks' ability to engage in digital asset activities, and thus, placed the United States at a competitive disadvantage relative to non-U.S. firms that are not subject to similar, stringent requirements. The agencies helpfully rescinded or withdrew multiple problematic interpretive letters, statements, and other guidance documents over the past few weeks. These are significant actions that we appreciate, as they remove some of the barriers to banks' ability to engage in digital asset activities. But additional steps are needed for the U.S. to achieve a leadership position in digital assets and financial technology—namely, greater clarity regarding banking organizations’ ability to engage in digital asset activities. Banks are an essential component of the financial and payments systems and are governed by a comprehensive regulatory framework designed to mitigate the risks inherent to financial activities. It is therefore critical that the federal banking agencies take further steps to facilitate banks’ engagement in digital asset activities. It is our hope that the PWG will incorporate the recommendations set forth below into its report to the President pursuant to Section 4(c) of the Executive Order and encourage the banking agencies to undertake the recommended actions set forth herein.

Download the joint trades letter to read the full text.