By
Benjamin Njiri
April 23rd, 2024
Hsu described the cryptocurrency space as a fast-growing market with numerous innovations and added that a failure to begin acting now will only make policing harder in the future.
Michael Hsu, the Acting Comptroller of the Currency, has asked US regulators to collaborate and establish a “regulatory perimeter” for digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Hsu, in an interview, revealed that US regulators plan to take a more active role in policies regarding digital assets and cryptocurrencies, highlighting the need to minimize the associated risks faced by investors and consumers.
“It really comes down to coordinating across the agencies,” Hsu stated. “Just in talking to some of my peers, there is interest in coordinating a lot more of these things,” Hsu added. Hsu also revealed that the first meeting of the inter-agency, crypto-focused “sprint” team, which comprises representatives from the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, took place earlier this month.
Hsu stated that the group is tasked with “ideas in front of the agencies to consider” rather than formulating policy, describing the group as small but ‘senior’. Hsu also described the cryptocurrency space as a fast-growing market with numerous innovations and added that a failure to begin acting now will only make policing the sector harder in the future. “The idea is that time is of the essence and if it’s too big that gets harder,” Hsu stated.
The crypto market which has been in a slumber saw most of its top cryptocurrencies fall further after news of the head of OCC calling for regulatory agencies in the US to create a regulatory perimeter broke. Regulatory concerns for cryptocurrencies and digital assets have once again gained ground in the US in wake of ransomware and hacking attacks on institutions. The idea of a tighter set of regulations dangling above the crypto market saw Bitcoin fall to $34,600 in the early stages of Monday whiles ETH fell to $2,300.
Whiles, many crypto experts, and investors believe that a vigorous system established by the US regulators will crash the crypto market, newly appointed SEC chairman Gary Gensler however thinks otherwise as he emphasized “gaps” in the “current system” when talking about crypto in a meeting with a House committee last month.
Gensler added that he believed the United States lacks concrete regulatory guidelines for crypto-assets and noted that, the US Treasury Department has recently focused on “anti-money laundering and guarding against illicit activity” in the digital asset industry.
Gensler again stressed the need to regulate crypto exchanges while speaking at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s annual conference stating that investors on crypto exchanges should get similar protection as that offered to investors at the New York Stock Exchange. “This is quite volatile, one might say highly volatile, asset class, and the investing public would benefit from investor protection on the crypto exchanges,” Gensler stated.