During his campaign and early presidency, Donald Trump made bold promises about supporting cryptocurrency. Now, with Executive Order 14178, he has taken a concrete step toward reshaping U.S. digital asset policy. Titled “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology,” this order explicitly protects the right to access and use public blockchain networks for lawful purposes without government persecution.
I’ve spent most of my professional life working on ways to move money more efficiently—what I often call “money mobility.”
Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of buzzwords and promises come and go, but one trend that’s truly reshaping our industry right now is the shift from embedded payments to embedded banking. If we get this right, we can help businesses turn the cost of payouts into a genuine revenue driver.
In a quiet but paradigm-shifting move, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has rescinded Interpretive Letter 1179 (November 18, 2021) and reaffirmed that national banks and federal savings associations may engage in crypto-asset custody, operate distributed ledger (DLT) infrastructure, and issue stablecoins under specific regulatory conditions. The OCC's March 7, 2025, policy update clarifies these permissions, rolling back previous restrictions on tokenized deposit issuance, blockchain transaction validation, and digital asset settlement mechanisms (OCC, 2025).