The post U.S. Congressional Republicans in Hot Pursuit of Biden-Era’s Crypto Debanking appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

An investigation in the U.S. House of Representatives and a hearing in the Senate will examine whether financial regulators during the administration of former President Joe Biden deliberately cut off crypto industry leaders and others from the banking system in an inappropriate use of authority. “Debanking is un-American — every legal business deserves to be treated the same regardless of their political beliefs,” said Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who took over the gavel earlier this month and has scheduled a February 5 hearing on debanking. “Unfortunately, under Operation Chokepoint 2.0, Biden regulators abused their power and forced financial institutions to cut off services to digital asset firms, political figures, and conservative-aligned businesses and individuals.” Operation Chokepoint 2.0 is the name Republican lawmakers and the digital assets industry have been using for the systemic severing of crypto insiders from U.S. banks, in reference to an earlier era’s Operation Chokepoint — a government-sanctioned effort to reduce risk in banking by encouraging the lenders to back away from legal but otherwise risky businesses. Delving into the struggle of crypto executives and businesses to maintain banking relationships, the House Oversight Committee is “investigating whether this debanking practice originates from the financial institutions themselves or from either implicit or explicit pressure from government regulators,” according to a letter the committee chairman, Representative James Comer, sent on Friday to founders and CEOs of several crypto companies and organizations, including Coinbase, Lightswap and Uniswap Labs. The challenge of pinning the lack of banking options entirely on the government is that some financial institutions may have made decisions based on their own risk appetites or business plans that deliberately steered clear of crypto interests. And banking regulators such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the…

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Filed under: News - @ January 24, 2025 11:19 pm