OCC Removes a Special Supervisory Barrier for Bank Crypto Custody
The OCC reaffirmed that national banks could conduct certain crypto custody, stablecoin, and distributed-ledger activities and removed a prior requirement that banks obtain supervisory non-objection before engaging in them.
On March 7, 2025, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued Interpretive Letter 1183, reaffirming that national banks and federal savings associations could provide cryptocurrency custody services and engage in certain stablecoin and distributed-ledger activities when otherwise legally permissible.
The letter also rescinded the special supervisory non-objection process imposed in 2021. Banks no longer had to receive a specific supervisory clearance before beginning the covered activities, although ordinary safety-and-soundness, risk-management, and legal obligations continued to apply.
For Bitcoin, the change mattered most through custody and banking infrastructure. It lowered a procedural barrier that had treated digital-asset activities as requiring exceptional advance approval and moved bank involvement in Bitcoin-related services closer to the normal supervisory framework used for other permissible financial activities.