OCC Chief Downplays Fears of Stablecoin’s ‘Bank Run’

The top US banking regulator dismissed fears that stablecoins could trigger a sudden deposit crisis, urging community banks to view the digital assets as tools to compete with Wall Street giants rather than existential threats.

Jonathan Gould, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, told those present at the American Bankers Association’s annual convention in Charlotte on Monday that a flight of material deposits “would not happen unnoticed” and “would not happen overnight.”

“If there was a material flight from the banking system, I would take action,” Gould said, noting that “highly elected officials” and trade associations would also intervene.

His comments come as the banking industry has spent months demanding that Congress close loopholes in the GENIUS Act, the nation’s first major law. stable currency legislation that was signed into law in July.

Standard Chartered recently predicted that stablecoins could siphon $1 trillion in deposits from emerging market banks within three years, while a Treasury Department report said stablecoins could trigger up to $6.6 trillion in U.S. deposits, depending on yield offerings.

The sector continues to grow, with users of the Myriad prediction market (launched by Declutter‘s parent company Dastan) gives a 55% chance on the market cap of all stablecoins exceeding $360 billion before February 2026.

Federal banking agencies working on the GENIUS Act regulations are “very aware of the regulatory deadlines that Congress has given us,” he added.

Payment stablecoin connectivity “could be an opportunity” for community banks to “break some of the dominance that currently exists among the very largest banks in the payments system in America,” Gould said, emphasizing his role in ensuring “there are ways to do this in a safe and sound way.”

“I don’t think that’s fair,” Gould said of creating an “unlevel playing field” in which only institutions with “risk management sophistication” or strong balance sheets can participate in new technologies, pledging to “open as many avenues as possible for your long-term viability and success.”

Banking groups warn of ‘loopholes in the law’

The American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute and more than 50 state banking groups wrote a letter to Congress in August demanding that “several loopholes” be closed.

The banking groups urged Congress to extend the interest rate ban to “digital asset exchanges, brokers, dealers and affiliates” and called for scrapping the approval pathway that allows non-financial companies to issue stablecoins.

“Banks’ concerns about stablecoins aren’t just about regulation – it’s about survival in a changing financial landscape,” Prarabdh Sharma, DeFi Partnerships at STBL, told me. Declutter. “Even a 10% shift could increase their borrowing costs by 20 to 30 basis points, reducing credit capacity and profitability.”

However, Prarabdh noted that the shift presents opportunities as banks can “use the same underlying blockchain rails to tokenize deposits, streamline payments and self-issue regulated, interest-bearing digital dollars.”

Bridge applied for an OCC national trust charter in October, following Coinbase, Circle, Paxos and Ripple.

Anchorage Digital became the first digital asset firm to receive an OCC charter in 2021, although it operated under a consent order until August, when the OCC terminated the order, citing the bank had achieved “compliance” with safety and soundness requirements.