by Jake ClaverOCC, bank crypto activities, and stablecoin activities: stablecoins doing real settlement work
Here the focus is OCC, bank crypto activities, and stablecoin activities, which put stablecoins to work as settlement money. Every part of it traces back to a named, primary source.
The Settlement Layer
This material is about fiat-denominated value moving through the ecosystem, usually via issuance or settlement. Supporting material comes from the OCC news release and the Arnold & Porter summary. OCC Interpretive Letter 1183, a legal and policy record from the organizations involved, states it directly:
> Interpretive Letter 1179 (November 18, 2021). This letter also reaffirms that the crypto-asset custody, distributed ledger, and stablecoin activities (hereafter, “crypto-asset activities”) discussed in prior letters are permissible. Specifically, the OCC issued three interpretive letters in 2020 and early 2021 addressing whether it is permissible for national banks and federal savings associations (collectively, “banks”) to engage in crypto-asset activities.
What This Means For Market Infrastructure
What it changes for the broader institutional payments and tokenization stack: stablecoin activity can improve how useful a network is for payments and treasury operations.
From The Source
