Did US regulators just greenlight public blockchains to banks?

US banking regulators, Federal Reserve, the OCC and the FDIC, jointly issued a statement clarifying the capital treatment of tokenized securities is the same regardless whether they are issued on permissioned or permissionless blockchains.

Source: OCC press release

➡️ Why this matters

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) previously warned that permissionless public blockchains created additional operational, governance, and compliance risks in Working Paper 44 in 2024.

Those risks translated into tangible prudential consequences under Basel’s SCO60 cryptoasset exposure framework, where engaging with permissionless infrastructure carried significantly higher balance-sheet costs for banks.

While Basel guidance is not legally binding, it functions as the global prudential standard that national regulators typically follow.

In the US, the agencies responsible for translating the guidance into rulemaking are the Fed, the OCC and the FDIC. This joint statement therefore represents a clear divergence from Basel’s earlier framing of public blockchain risk.

➡️ Practical Implications

In effect, the clarification removes the balance sheet cost differential for banks between operating on private permissioned and public permissionless blockchains.

Banks are no longer penalized from a capital perspective for holding or transacting in tokenized securities issued on public permissionless chains

Instead of defaulting to private, permissioned blockchain infrastructure, banks now have regulatory space to issue, transact, and operationalize tokenized securities directly on public networks.

➡️ The sticky question

While the regulators can change capital rules, they cannot not eliminate the underlying risks. If a blockchain failure were to occur, who ultimately are on the hooks to pay? The network, the issuer, the bank, or the regulator that allowed it?

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