OCC Debanking Report Finds No Specific Crypto Evidence

A sweeping federal review of bank account closures failed to produce a single documented instance of a digital asset firm being cut off from financial services, despite years of industry claims that regulators orchestrated a coordinated campaign against crypto companies.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released its 47-page findings Wednesday after examining policies at nine major U.S. banks. The review, mandated by an August 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump targeting “unlawful debanking,” confirmed that institutions maintained both public and nonpublic policies restricting access for several sectors. Digital assets were listed alongside firearms, tobacco, and oil and gas as industries facing service limitations.

Banks attributed their restrictions on cryptocurrency issuers, exchanges, and administrators primarily to financial crime considerations rather than political pressure. The OCC acknowledged it could not comprehensively quantify the full scale of debanking or alleged debanking across the institutions it examined.

The absence of concrete examples in the report contrasts sharply with the narrative promoted by the digital asset sector since late 2023. More than 30 technology and cryptocurrency executives publicly claimed in November 2024 that they had been denied banking access, widely blaming an informal regulatory crackdown dubbed “Operation Chokepoint 2.0.” That label borrowed from an Obama-era Department of Justice initiative originally designed to combat fraud and money laundering by pressuring banks to sever ties with payday lenders and other high-risk merchants. Crypto advocates repurposed the term to allege that the Biden administration weaponized supervisory guidance to starve blockchain startups of basic treasury and payroll accounts.

Jonathan Gould, head of the OCC, centered his public remarks on the report’s findings regarding fossil fuels and weapons manufacturers rather than digital assets. Banks restricting coal-related clients cited fears of negative headlines, public protests, and reputational damage, according to Gould. He characterized those decisions as driven by optics rather than actual financial risk.

This distinction matters for how federal banking law treats institutional risk management. Under the Bank Secrecy Act and related anti-money laundering frameworks, national banks are required to assess the specific risk profile of individual customers. Regulators have historically warned against “de-risking” — the practice of wholesale exiting entire categories of legal businesses because compliance costs outweigh potential revenue. When banks apply blanket bans to lawful industries based on reputation rather than individualized risk assessments, they can run afoul of fair access expectations, even though no explicit federal statute guarantees every legal business a bank account.

The OCC’s inability to measure the scope of the problem points to a structural challenge in tracking account closures. Banks rarely disclose internal reasons for terminating relationships, and affected customers often sign nondisclosure agreements as part of account closure settlements. The Federal Reserve is separately soliciting public feedback on a related proposal aimed at addressing these transparency gaps, which critics argue is necessary to prevent future iterations of targeted financial exclusion.

The nine-bank sample reviewed by the OCC represents only a fraction of the U.S. banking system, leaving thousands of regional and community banks outside the scope of this particular inquiry. Smaller institutions have historically been the primary banking partners for early-stage cryptocurrency firms, meaning the most acute friction between traditional finance and digital assets may remain undocumented by the comptroller’s office.

The OCC continues to accept supervisory data from national banks regarding customer onboarding and termination practices under the parameters set by the August 2025 executive order.