FDIC Rescinds Prior Notification Requirement for Banks' Permissible Crypto Activities
The FDIC has rescinded an earlier Financial Institution Letter establishing a prior notification requirement for FDIC-supervised institutions that wish to engage in specified crypto-related activities and has clarified that such institutions may engage in permissible crypto-related activities without receiving prior FDIC approval.
Following the OCC's recent move to ease some restrictions on bank digital asset activities, the FDIC's latest Financial Institution Letter (FIL-7-2025) ("FIL") rescinds the prior notification requirement that the FDIC had established in a previous letter (FIL-16-2022). The FIL also indicates that the FDIC will work with other agencies, including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ("OCC"), to replace 2023 joint statements in which the agencies indicated that crypto-related activities—even permissible ones—were unlikely to be consistent with bank safety and soundness.
In issuing this guidance, the FDIC is signaling a significant shift toward openness to its supervised banks engaging in bank-permissible crypto-related activities. FDIC-supervised banks should take increased confidence that the FDIC will not discourage (or, in effect, reject) through the supervisory process efforts by banks to engage in such activities. That said, the FIL does caution supervised institutions to conduct permissible crypto-related activities in a safe and sound manner, consistent with existing risk management principles and examination policies.
In the OCC's recent related guidance (discussed further in our recent Commentary, "OCC Eases Some Restrictions on Bank Digital Asset Activities"), it eased prior notification restrictions and withdrew from the 2023 joint statements on crypto-related risks, while here, the FDIC only stated its intent to work with other agencies on replacing such statements. But the direction the FDIC is signaling is clear: more openness to bank-permissible crypto-related activities.
