Lowenstein Crypto advises main digital asset and cryptocurrency tasks, exchanges, and buying and selling corporations. Our apply covers regulatory recommendation, transactions and structuring recommendation, investigations, and adversarial issues together with industrial disputes, chapter, and associated litigation. As these markets proceed their fast progress and market individuals proceed to evolve and mature their companies, we’re offering this weekly digest as a useful resource that highlights and summarizes a choice of key current authorized regulatory developments.
OCC Permits U.S. Banks To Maintain and Use Cryptocurrency
On Nov. 18, the Workplace of the Comptroller of the Foreign money (OCC) issued new steering permitting nationwide banks to carry and spend cryptocurrency on their steadiness sheets when essential to help permissible banking actions, resembling paying blockchain community charges, working distributed-ledger platforms, or testing digital-asset methods. The interpretive letter reverses prior restrictions that required supervisory approval for crypto involvement and discouraged interplay with public blockchain networks, reflecting a broader regulatory shift beneath new management and the present administration. Whereas banks might now instantly handle restricted quantities of digital belongings and may outsource custody to permitted third events, the OCC emphasised that each one crypto-associated operations stay topic to plain threat-administration expectations. The transfer continues the deregulatory momentum that started with the rollback of constraints beneath the Biden administration and comes amid rising curiosity from conventional and digital-asset corporations searching for nationwide financial institution or belief charters. See Interpretive Letter 1186 here.
CFTC Nomination Senate Listening to Held for Michael Selig
On Nov. 19, Michael Selig appeared earlier than the USA Senate Committee on Agriculture, Vitamin, and Forestry because the nominee to chair the Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee (CFTC). Selig at present serves because the Chief Counsel of the Safety and Trade Fee’s (SEC) Crypto Job Pressure. The listening to centered on 4 priorities: (1) equipping the company to oversee quickly evolving markets; (2) establishing a transparent, ideas-primarily based framework for digital asset spot markets, if approved by Congress; (3) preserving accessible, resilient hedging markets for agriculture and power, together with recalibrating burdens on futures fee retailers and lowering opaque “no-motion” and unwritten steering; and (4) resolving authorized and threat points round occasion contracts and prediction markets. Selig dedicated to being a “regular cop on the beat” and pledged sooner and extra predictable licensing, higher cross-border substituted compliance, and shut interagency coordination with the SEC and Treasury. The complete listening to is on the market here.
New Hampshire Approves First Bitcoin-Backed Conduit Bond
On Nov. 17, New Hampshire approved a $100 million Bitcoin-backed conduit bond, permitting company debtors to make use of over-collateralized Bitcoin whereas shielding taxpayers from reimbursement threat. Developed with Wave Digital Belongings and Rosemawr Administration, the construction locations Bitcoin collateral inside conventional mounted-revenue norms, together with liquidation thresholds to guard traders. The state’s Enterprise Finance Authority (BFA) will oversee the conduit financing with out assuming legal responsibility, constructing on current laws establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve within the state. Charges and potential collateral beneficial properties will movement into the state’s Bitcoin Financial Improvement Fund, and officers view this system as a managed take a look at of Bitcoin’s efficiency as excessive-grade collateral. Positioned as the primary municipal mannequin of its sort, the construction might present a template for integrating digital belongings into the broader world bond market and affect different states exploring regulated crypto-backed borrowing. See minutes from the BFA board assembly here.
SEC Division of Examinations Declares 2026 Priorities, Notably Omitting Cryptocurrency
On Nov. 17, the Securities and Trade Fee’s (SEC) Division of Examinations (Division) launched its 2026 examination priorities, which purpose to offer transparency and information compliance efforts. The Division, which examines funding advisors, funding firms, dealer-sellers, and others, mentioned that it’ll give attention to fiduciary duties and requirements of conduct and can assess compliance with new guidelines, together with the 2024 amendments to Regulation S‑P. The announcement didn’t tackle cryptocurrency as a Division examination precedence, breaking with its 2024 and 2025 precedence bulletins. The SEC press launch states that the 2026 priorities usually are not “an exhaustive record of all of the areas the Division will give attention to within the upcoming 12 months.” See the SEC press launch here.
Japan’s Monetary Companies Company Proposes To Classify 105 Cryptocurrencies as Monetary Merchandise
On Nov. 16, Japan’s Monetary Companies Company (FSA) introduced that it plans to categorise cryptocurrencies, together with Bitcoin and Ethereum, as monetary merchandise beneath the Monetary Devices and Trade Act (FIEA), bringing them beneath the identical regulatory framework as shares and bonds and requiring exchanges to reveal every token’s issuer, blockchain infrastructure, and historical past of volatility whereas complying with stricter insider-buying and selling guidelines. As a part of its broader crypto reform effort, the FSA additionally goals to amend the tax regime by changing the present “miscellaneous revenue” classification I with a flat 20 p.c tax on cryptocurrency beneficial properties. These proposals are anticipated to be debated throughout the nation’s 2026 parliamentary session. An area newspaper article citing the Monetary Companies Company may be discovered here.
