US lawmakers are weighing legislation that would let regulated banks and credit unions custody digital assets, issue stablecoins and operate blockchain-based financial infrastructure. The proposals aim to move crypto activities from agency guidance to statutory authority, while preserving capital, liquidity, cybersecurity and risk-management oversight by the Federal Reserve, FDIC and OCC.
Under the emerging framework, deposit-taking institutions could safeguard tokenized assets and use distributed ledgers for deposits, settlement, tokenized securities and interbank communication. Congressional authorization would not eliminate prudential safeguards, and officials stress that crypto custody would not automatically confer FDIC deposit insurance.
The debate follows the Senate's 49–50 procedural vote on Sept. 15 that blocked the CLARITY Act. Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan wrote in a Sept. 30 memo that the setback produced "better rules, faster" by avoiding negotiated business restrictions, even though it sacrificed long-term statutory certainty. Between the vote and Sept. 30, Bitcoin rose 8% and Ethereum climbed 7%, according to Bitwise.
Token buybacks became a focal point after SEC staff guidance issued Sept. 25 and updated Sept. 28. The FAQs said a non-security token's network must be functional and have no central party for a buyback announcement to avoid resembling a promise of managerial effort. Bitwise reported that tokens using platform revenue for repurchases outperformed: NEAR gained 104%, Uniswap 49%, Pump 19%, Hyperliquid 15% and Lighter 10%.
Stablecoin platforms and exchanges also benefited from the CLARITY Act's failure, according to Hougan. Because stablecoin reward restrictions did not become law, platforms such as Coinbase retained room to offer third-party rewards; Kraken and Coinbase also preserved state-level licensing and combined trading-brokerage models. The SEC separately granted a five-year conditional exemption for tokenized U.S. stock trading venues on Sept. 17, a faster route than the study envisioned under the failed bill.
If enacted, the banking legislation would represent another stage in crypto's integration with U.S. finance, allowing banks and credit unions to hold digital assets, issue blockchain-based dollars and use distributed ledgers as ordinary financial infrastructure. The policy debate is shifting from whether regulated institutions should touch blockchain technology to how those activities should be supervised.
