Federal Reserve Ends Special Supervision Program for Bank Crypto Activities
The Federal Reserve ended its novel-activities supervision program and returned bank crypto and fintech activities to the normal supervisory process. The move marked a shift from treating these activities through a dedicated supervisory framework toward incorporating them into ordinary bank oversight.
On August 15, 2025, the Federal Reserve announced that it would sunset the novel activities supervision program it had created in 2023 for certain crypto, distributed-ledger and fintech activities at supervised banks. The Board rescinded the supervisory letter establishing the program and said the activities would thereafter be monitored through the normal supervisory process.
The Fed explained that it had strengthened its understanding of the activities, their risks and banks’ risk-management practices during the program’s two-year life. Ending the specialized framework did not remove banking regulation or declare crypto activities risk-free. It changed the supervisory mechanism: knowledge developed in the special program would now be integrated into ordinary bank supervision.
That shift mattered to Bitcoin because banking access is a central piece of the asset’s institutional infrastructure. Banks may provide custody, payments, settlement, trading support or services to Bitcoin businesses and investment products. A supervisory structure that treats crypto-related activity as exceptional can affect willingness to enter those businesses even when an activity is otherwise legal.
Historically, August 15 marked another stage in the normalization of digital-asset activity within the U.S. banking system. Bitcoin remained subject to prudential and legal constraints, but the Federal Reserve no longer maintained a separate program simply because the supervised activity was categorized as novel or crypto-related.