What happened
Congress is weighing legislation that would let federally regulated US banks custody crypto assets and issue payment stablecoins, CryptoBriefing reported early Friday. The proposal, still in drafting phase, would hand national banks and state-chartered institutions explicit statutory authority to hold Bitcoin, Ether, and other digital assets on behalf of customers, and to mint dollar-backed tokens under federal supervision.
Lawmakers have not published final bill text. The reporting cites discussions on the Hill rather than a filed draft, which means the scope, capital treatment, and reserve rules are still moving. What's clear is the direction: a federal lane for bank-held crypto, not a workaround through trust charters or non-bank custodians.
Why it matters
US banks have spent three years locked out of crypto custody in any meaningful way. SAB 121, the SEC accounting bulletin that forced banks to carry custodied crypto on balance sheet, effectively made the business uneconomic. Operation Choke Point 2.
0, as the industry labeled the 2023 banking crackdown, pushed firms like Silvergate and Signature out and left Coinbase, BitGo, and Anchorage holding most of the institutional custody flow. A statutory carveout would reset that. It would also give banks a direct path into stablecoin issuance, a market currently split roughly 70-20 between Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC, with the rest spread across PayPal's PYUSD and smaller issuers.