FDIC released 175 records documenting resistance to banks’ crypto plans

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation released 175 documents on February 5, 2025 concerning its supervision of banks that had engaged in, or wanted to engage in, crypto-related activities. Acting Chairman Travis Hill paired the disclosure with a policy signal: the agency was reevaluating its approach and intended to replace a 2022 notification process that had governed banks’ crypto plans.

The release mattered because confidential bank supervision had become central to a public argument over whether U.S. regulators were keeping lawful digital-asset businesses outside the banking system. The records supplied direct evidence about how the FDIC handled bank proposals. They did not, by themselves, prove every broader allegation grouped under the political label “Operation Choke Point 2.0.”

What the FDIC released

Hill said the batch included additional correspondence with 24 institutions that had been the subjects of 25 previously released “pause” letters, plus correspondence involving other institutions. The materials covered banks pursuing products or services connected to crypto or blockchain technology; the FDIC did not identify the institutions in its public account.

The acting chairman characterized the record as showing that bank requests were “almost universally” met with resistance. He listed repeated demands for more information, months without responses, and instructions to pause, suspend or avoid expanding activities. In Hill’s assessment, those actions made progress extraordinarily difficult and caused most banks to stop trying.

That conclusion was an attributable statement by the agency’s new leader, not a numerical finding independently calculated by Coinburn. The 175-document count describes released records, not 175 banks, 175 rejected applications or 175 enforcement actions. Redactions and the confidentiality of supervisory communications also limited what outsiders could reconstruct about individual cases.

The rule behind the correspondence

The immediate policy backdrop was Financial Institution Letter 16-2022, issued on April 7, 2022. It asked every FDIC-supervised institution already conducting or planning crypto-related activity to notify its regional director and submit information sufficient for the agency to assess safety and soundness, consumer protection and financial-stability implications.

The letter defined crypto-related activity broadly, including custody, stablecoin reserves or issuance, exchange functions, lending, and participation in blockchain-based payment or settlement systems. It promised supervisory feedback “as appropriate” and in a timely manner, but it did not determine that every listed activity was legally permissible.

An October 2023 evaluation by the FDIC’s Office of Inspector General had already found important process weaknesses. The watchdog said the agency had not completed a risk assessment of crypto activities and that its feedback process under the 2022 letter was unclear. It recommended timeframes and a clearer endpoint for reviews. That earlier finding provides institutional context for the delays described on February 5 without converting Hill’s interpretation of the newly released records into an uncontested fact.

A policy shift, not immediate permission

On February 5, Hill said the FDIC was actively considering a replacement for FIL-16-2022 and a pathway for banks to pursue crypto and blockchain activities while maintaining safety-and-soundness standards. That was a directional commitment. The document release did not itself rescind the letter, approve any bank product, guarantee a bank account to a crypto company or remove existing laws and supervisory obligations.

The distinction between a bank performing crypto activity and a bank providing ordinary services to a crypto-sector customer also remained important. Contemporaneous Reuters reporting on the earlier pause-letter release found evidence that supervisors told banks to pause direct initiatives or supply more information, but not that the FDIC had ordered banks across the board to refuse crypto companies as customers.

The timing amplified the institutional significance. The Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on debanking on February 5, with Anchorage Digital chief executive Nathan McCauley among the witnesses. The release therefore entered an active congressional dispute with a primary record rather than resolving that dispute.

Later context

On March 28, 2025, the FDIC rescinded FIL-16-2022 and said supervised institutions could conduct permissible crypto-related activities without prior agency approval if they managed the associated risks. That later action confirmed the policy change Hill previewed; it should not be read as a rule already in force on February 5.