Bank of America: U.S. Banks Are Heading Toward an On-Chain Future as Crypto Rulemaking Accelerates
Bank of America reports that U.S. banks are moving toward an on-chain future amid accelerating crypto regulations. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted conditional national trust bank charters to five digital-asset firms, indicating federal acceptance of stablecoins and crypto custody within regulated banks.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is expected to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking to allow payment stablecoins issued by subsidiaries of FDIC-supervised banks. In addition, rules under the GENIUS Act must be finalized by July 2026 and take effect by January 2027.
Federal Reserve officials have indicated collaboration with other regulators on capital, liquidity, and diversification standards for stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act. These efforts align with global moves such as the Bank of England's sterling-stablecoin regime.
JPMorgan and DBS are piloting interoperable tokenized value transfers across public and permissioned blockchains, building on JPMorgan’s JPMD tokenized deposits.
Bank of America envisions the on-chain migration of bonds, stocks, money-market funds, and cross-border payments, supported by new rules and institutional-grade infrastructure. Banks will need blockchain fluency and a willingness to experiment with tokenized assets and on-chain settlement to prepare for this shift.
This transition is expected to be a multi-year process, with recent regulatory approvals marking the start of this shift.
