PANews reported on December 6 that according to CoinDesk, according to information obtained by a research company hired by Coinbase Inc. (COIN), in 2022, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. suspended or blocked a large number of US banks' crypto banking activities. History Associates Inc., a helper hired by Coinbase, took the FDIC and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to court in June and eventually gained access to certain internal communications of the FDIC. A large number of redacted documents released on Friday showed that bank regulators have taken severe measures against lenders that provide or consider providing products and services in the field of digital assets.
The industry has long complained that it is in the midst of a banking crisis, with companies and leading crypto figures being barred from using U.S. banking services. Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal argued that the letters are hard evidence that regulators are systematically isolating cryptocurrency businesses from banking. Grewal said: "These letters show that this is not a conspiracy theory at all, this is not just speculation or the whims of a paranoid industry, the FDIC had an elaborate plan that they had no qualms about implementing to deny banking services to a legitimate U.S. industry. This should give everyone food for thought."
Grewal said the next step for the federal court would be to require the redactions in the letters to be cleared to reveal the institutions involved, the services they were trying to provide and all the questions they were asked. He said that would help understand the "why" of the FDIC's position. "Even though the federal courts have repeatedly ordered the FDIC to provide this information, they continue to drag their feet, and we think it's time for them to stop," Grewal said. The government has previously tried to separate controversial but legal businesses from banking operations, and the de-banking effort is known in the industry as "Operation Chokepoint 2.0."
