Last night it was officially announced that acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks is stepping down today (14 January 2021) after eight months in the role. He joined the agency as Deputy Comptroller in April 2020 after serving as Chief Legal Officer of Coinbase for 19 months. The new acting Comptroller is the current Chief Operating Officer Blake Paulson, who first joined the OCC in 1986.
Earlier this week, Brooks penned an opinion piece in the Financial Times. He urged regulatory clarity for decentralized finance (DeFi), what he termed ‘self-driving banks’ or DeFi apps that take deposits, grant loans, and process payments. He suggested that laws might be revisited to enable the grant of national banking charters to open source software that lacks identifiable officers. Those ‘antiquated rules should be revisited,’ he said.
Previously Brooks made clear that he believes the deposit-taking function of incumbent banks will not survive blockchain decentralization.
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