Summary
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (collectively, the agencies) are issuing these frequently asked questions (FAQ) to clarify the regulatory capital treatment of tokenized securities.
Note for Community Banks
The interagency FAQs transmitted by this bulletin apply to all OCC-supervised banks1 that have exposures to tokenized securities.
Highlights
- The agencies are clarifying that the technologies used to issue and transact in a security do not generally impact its regulatory capital treatment. Additionally, the capital rule does not provide a different treatment based on the use of permissioned or permissionless blockchains.
- A tokenized security that, under applicable law, confers legal rights identical to those of the non-tokenized form of the security (“eligible tokenized security”)2 should be treated in the same manner for regulatory capital purposes as the non-tokenized form of the security would be treated.
- An eligible tokenized security that satisfies the definition of “financial collateral” would qualify as financial collateral for purposes of 12 CFR 3.2 and be recognized by the banking organization as a credit risk mitigant if all the other relevant requirements in the capital rule are met.
Further Information
Please contact Margot Schwadron, Director, or Diana Wei, Risk Expert, Capital Policy, at (202) 649-6370 or David Stankiewicz, Director, Financial Technology, at (202) 649-7299
James M. Gallagher
Senior Deputy Comptroller and Chief National Bank Examiner
