米国がデジタル資産経済の世界的リーダーという位置付けを目指す今、暗号資産（仮想通貨）をめぐる新しい機会を得たカストディ機関

They say good luck comes in threes. Well, the first week of Trump’s presidency has already resulted in three pieces of news that could be good luck for banks interested in offering services around digital currencies. Crypto custody is a potentially lucrative line of business, with providers charging as much as ten times more for safekeeping crypto than traditional assets.

Firstly and perhaps the most immediately relevant for banks is the SEC’s repeal of Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) No. 121 that made it challenging, to say the least, for regulated banks to custody digital assets.SAB No. 121, effective from April 11, 2022, directed banks and other public companies to mark any customer’s crypt assets on their balance sheets. SAB 122 rescinds this guidance and directs firms to use Financial Accounting Standards Board rules or International Accounting Standard provisions.

This may not come as a complete surprise to custody banks as BNY Mellon had recently received a “no-objection” from the SEC regarding a request to safeguard digital assets held by exchange-traded products without having to list them as balance sheet liabilities.

In other “crypto-friendly” news, on Jan 21, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce was named head of a new crypto task force.Hester has long opposed SEB 121 and has been a long-time advocate for the crypto industry.In making this announcement the SEC stated, “To date the SEC relied primarily on enforcement actions to regulate crypto retroactively and reactively…The SEC can do better.” The new taskforce will coordinate with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and it invites public input at crypto@sec.gov.

source: X (formerely Twitter)

Meanwhile, President Trump’s issued an executive order which aims to “establish regulatory clarity for digital financial technology and secure America’s position as the world’s leader in the digital asset economy”. According to the White House, the executive order

• Established a Working Group tasked with developing a Federal regulatory framework governing digital assets, including stablecoins, and evaluating the creation of a strategic national digital assets stockpile
• Prohibits federal agencies from undertaking any action to establish, issue or promote central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)
• Revokes the previous Administration’s Digital Assets Executive Order and the Treasury Department’s Framework for International Engagement on Digital Assets.
• Fulfils President Trump’s promise to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet”

The prohibition on federal agencies and CBDCs is not a complete surprise, considering Trump told a Bitcoin conference last July that he would instruct the Department of Treasury to abandon the creation of a central bank digital currency, and appoint a bitcoin and crypto advisory council. This Executive Order now calls into question the future of the NY Federal Reserve Bank's participation in Project Agora, led by led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub in partnership with the Institute of International Finance.

It may also not be a surprise if Trump embarks on a more private route for an e-dollar. Research from GlobalData (Celent is a GlobalData business) suggest issuing stablecoins is also highly profitable. Stablecoin reserves are typically yieldbearing, and with low overhead, much of this yield is kept as profit for the issuer. In partnership with Circle, Coinbase issued USDC, now the secondlargest stablecoin. In the first quarter of 2024, Coinbase earned $197 million from USDC and its arrangement with Circle. But breaking into this may not be easy. The same GlobalData report noted that the stablecoin market exhibits "a winner-takes-all tendency due to the critical role of liquidity and network effects". The first and largest stablecoin, Tether USD (USDT), introduced in 2014 is ~3.5 times larger than its closest competitor (see exhibit below).