Are the US regulatory authorities hard in dealing with crypto?

This fell into our inbox a little more than an hour ago, with the kind permission of the Fed (our emphasis):

All year 2022 [Agencies that Regulate the Financial System] plan to create more clarity as to whether certain activities in connection with crypto-assets from banking organizations are legally permitted , and expectations of safety and reliability, consumer protection and compliance with existing laws in connection with:

• Service of crypto-assets and traditional custody services.

• Subcitement services.

• Facilitation of customer purchases and sales of crypto -assets.

• Credit loans secured by crypto-assets.

• Edition and distribution of stablecoins.

• Activities that contain the holding of crypto-assets in the balance sheet.

The agencies will also use banking capital and liquidity standards to crypto-assets for activities in which US banking organizations are involved and will continue to exchange ideas with the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision for his consultation process in this area.

As far as we know, this is the first attempt by the US banking authorities-a group to which not only the FED, but also the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Currency-against Krypto.

It comes after China started its own offer to contain the activities in this sector at the beginning of this year. While China's ban, which declared all activities in connection with the crypto trade for illegally, had a major impact on the price of the most important cryptocurrencies, trade with Bitcoin and Ethereum has hardly moved due to this announcement.

This is not completely surprising, as this is a declaration of intent to check whether rules have to be established in contrast to actual rules. It also seems unlikely that the US authorities will act as aggressively as their Chinese counterparts. You won't be so fast either-that it takes so long for US authorities to recognize the need that crypto could actually pose a threat to financial activities, speaks volumes.

However, as we have argued for a long time, other countries will probably follow China's example when it comes to challenging the dominance of the private sector in the digital currency area. Be it through the edition of own state -supported tokens or through the regulation of crypto. Investors and lenders would therefore do well to pay at least a little attention to the agencies's plans, so their previous action may also appear.