U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Visits UW

U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould discussed federal banking regulations, crypto currencies and digital assets at the University of Wyoming’s College of Law Thursday, April 9, during a lunch and conversation with faculty, students, the public and members of the Wyoming Bankers Association.

Julie Hill, dean of the College of Law, described the event as a unique opportunity to hear directly from the head of a federal agency whose work has a big impact in Wyoming.

“We are grateful to Comptroller Gould and the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) staff for their willingness to visit Wyoming and engage on a variety of banking topics,” Hill says.

During Gould’s visit, Hill asked Gould questions related to the OCC’s proposal on implementing the GENIUS Act; what success looks like at the OCC; and the dynamics between large banks and community banks. Other questions included the relationship between traditional banks and the crypto industry, and interagency coordination with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve. A question-and-answer session was available to attendees toward the end of the event, and attendees received one hour of continuing legal education credit.

“Thank you to the University of Wyoming College of Law for the warm welcome and to Dean Julie Hill for hosting a thoughtful and engaging discussion,” Gould says. “I appreciate the opportunity to hear perspectives on financial regulation outside of the D.C. bubble. The intellectual leadership of schools like the University of Wyoming and scholars like Dean Hill inspires and informs our federal policies. I look forward to working with them and the next generation of policymakers that they are shaping to ensure our banking system remains relevant, safe and strong.”

Gould serves as the 32nd comptroller of the currency, the chief officer of the OCC and administrator of the federal banking system. As the comptroller, he is responsible for chartering, regulating and supervising national banks, federal savings associations and federal branches and agencies of foreign banks. Gould also sits on the board of the FDIC.

“What that means in practice is that it is Comptroller Gould’s responsibility to keep the U.S. banking system from imploding,” Hill says. “Although he’s only been a comptroller for about eight months, he’s already managed to have some success, at least as I measure it.”

The OCC finalized its rule on reputation risk earlier last week, she adds. It also recently released a proposed set of rules related to the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. Signed into law in July 2025, the GENIUS Act tasks the OCC with creating and implementing a regulatory framework for payment stablecoins.

 

The OCC and the GENIUS Act

“The OCC is really excited about the role that Congress assigned it under the GENIUS Act,” Gould says. “We’re obviously one banking agency among many, both at the federal and at the state level, and Congress has kind of divvied up responsibilities accordingly. The OCC was responsible for so-called federal qualified payment stablecoin issuers and foreign issuers.”

Some of what the OCC has been asked to do under the act is similar to what it was originally created to do in the 1860s, which was “ensure that the notes that banks were issuing were backed by a common and standard set of assets underlying them,” Gould says.

The OCC’s legal team was looking at developing the regulatory framework ahead of President Donald Trump’s signing of the law, Gould says. This served as the first step of the proposal.

“We’re really proud of what we produced, a month ago or so now, in terms of our proposal for how to implement the GENIUS Act, or again, that subset of payment stablecoin issuers that we’re charged with regulating and supervising,” Gould says.

Gould complimented the Wyoming Division of Banking and its commissioner, Jeremiah Bishop, for the leadership they have taken in thinking about a regulatory framework for stablecoins.

In answer to Hill’s question on comments regarding the proposal, Gould says robust and informed comments are welcome from all who are inclined to comment.

“There are a host of issues -- we asked, I think, 211 questions in there. We’re asking those questions because we want people’s thoughts on our proposal,” Gould says. “It is just a proposal. I think it’s an intellectually defensible proposal; we try to adhere to the language and the plain text of the statute, namely, the GENIUS Act. That doesn’t mean we made the right decisions or got everything right, or even aspirationally … but I do think it’s an intellectually defensible proposal.”

A separate proposal with the Department of the Treasury addressing additional portions of the GENIUS Act is coming soon, Gould says, adding that the FDIC, which works closely with OCC, issued its own similar proposal that week.

“We’ve tried to create a proposal that gives us enough flexibility to respond to the comments that you all and others submit. Just from an administrative law standpoint, we have to ensure that whatever we finalize is the logical outgrowth of whatever we propose,” he says.

 

Success at the OCC

Asked by Hill what success looks like at the OCC, including in the banking system and integration of digital assets, Gould mentions the implementation of the GENIUS Act and, more generally, having the OCC be more technology agnostic. While the OCC has long claimed to be technology agnostic, it has not always lived up to that, he says.

For banks that want to engage in some form of digital asset technology or usage for themselves or their customers, Gould hopes the OCC will provide more clarity for banks to do so in a safe and sound manner, rather than “putting all the onus on the banks to come up with, ‘How do we do it in a safe and sound manner?’”

Too often, federal banking agencies, including the OCC, have issued unhelpful guidance about digital assets and other innovations, Gould says -- “basically saying, ‘Well, you know, technically, this is all legally permissible somehow, but we just don’t see how you can possibly do it in a safe and sound manner. So good luck with that.’”

In his opinion, this is unhelpful and creates a dynamic where only the largest banks pursue things such as digital asset technology because they are the only ones with the necessary resources.

“To me, success is not a situation in which only the very largest banks in our country can engage in a digital asset activity or use a new technology, whether it’s blockchain technology or AI. That’s a movie we’ve seen so many times before, and we all know how that movie ends,” Gould says. “We’re heading toward a banking oligopoly. We’ve been heading toward a banking oligopoly for 20 or 30 years now, and we need to stop this two-tiered system.”

Whether it’s with digital assets, or other new developments, including technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), success looks like a system where banks can engage in activities and embrace technologies, regardless of the size or sophistication of the bank, he says.

The Value of State Charters

In response to a related question regarding the dynamic between large banks and community banks, Gould says, in his opinion, unelected federal officials have, through discretionary policies, made decisions following the 2008 financial crisis that allow the largest banks to flourish. Gould’s not criticizing these banks, he says -- they’re responding to the incentives that have been created for them. Gould is trying to end the idea of “too small to succeed,” he adds, while noting community banks perform an outsized share of agricultural lending, small business lending and commercial real estate lending.

“It is absolutely the case that they fulfill a critical and, to some extent, increasingly unmet need across U.S. communities,” Gould says.

Changes need to be made on the regulatory and supervisory levels to address a dynamic where “only the very largest banks are winning at the end of the day,” Gould says.

Part of what Gould is trying to do as comptroller and an FDIC board member is provide bank management and boards with the space and time needed to “think about what’s right for them, what is their long-term strategy to viability, and what path is right for them?”

Gould also spoke to the benefits of a banking system based on choice.

“It’s absolutely critical that we have some states, including particularly states like Wyoming, that are willing to take chances and are willing to actually embrace innovation with a speed that, let’s face it, the U.S. Congress cannot,” Gould says. “That is one of the strengths of the state bank chartering framework, that you have a much more responsive and much more potentially innovative (system). It doesn’t mean that every one of the 50 states is going to be innovating in this area or that area. But as long as some are, that’s absolutely critical, and that constructive tension between the federal chartering authority, now just the OCC, and the 50 state chartering authorities is a positive good for the overall system.”

For more information on the OCC, visit www.occ.treas.gov/

For more information on UW’s College of Law, visit www.uwyo.edu/law/index.html.