Watch: OCC Allows Banks to Use Public Blockchains and Stablecoins as Settlement Infrastructure
On the evening of January 4, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the largest banking regulator in the United States, announced on its official website that U.S. banks are allowed to use public blockchains and U.S. dollar stablecoins as settlement infrastructure in the U.S. financial system.
This is undoubtedly a huge win for the stablecoin as well as the cryptocurrency industry.
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The founder of Morgan Creek Digital published a document praising OCC's approach, believing that the cryptocurrency industry will open a new chapter.
Indeed, the importance of this new regulation cannot be underestimated, as it means that a decentralized, permissionless open source and Internet-mediated public blockchain can become the foundation of the U.S. financial system and the global economy.
OCC chief Brian Brooks, who is friendly to cryptocurrencies, said in a separate statement that while other countries have built real-time payment systems, the U.S., relying on the private sector to create such technology, appears to support the use of cryptocurrencies (especially are stablecoins) as an alternative to other real-time payment systems.
Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire said that the United States is moving in a new direction of implementing all major economic activities on the chain, and the forward-looking thinking of OCC is very great.
This paves the way for leading USD stablecoins like USDC to become a mainstream payment medium, supporting all forms of payments and settlements, and helping the U.S. lead in embracing public blockchains.
As we all know, the public blockchain is different from the traditional settlement medium. In addition to payment and settlement, it also combines transaction and computing functions, so that a new financial and business application model can be built. It also sets the stage for more regulated financial institutions to run blockchain nodes and even become validators.
Jeremy Allaire believes that this is a new beginning for the cryptocurrency industry, and 2021 will also be the year when cryptocurrencies and stablecoins enter the mass market!
