🚨HUGE NEWS on #debanking & #OperationChokePoint2.0: a little birdie told me that @FDICgov Vice Chair Travis Hill just spoke at an ABA meeting & said there is no place at the FDIC for those who explicitly or implicitly supported its debanking initiative. Transcript not avail yet
Travis Hill is a Republican & is vice chairman of the FDIC—has been outvoted by Biden/Warrenites on the FDIC board, but that will change on Jan 20 when Gruenberg steps down.
It'll be soooooooo interesting to see if Hill went off-script. Don't forget Gruenberg's people still control the FDIC (head of comms is allegedly trying to silence online critics of #debanking, so I doubt such remarks would've made it thru official editing of his speech, which should be posted at this site soon): fdic.gov/news/speeches
It'll also be interesting to see how many more FDIC whistleblowers come forward. I know of multiple.
Again, from experience I'm certain there are many good people at the federal banking agencies who disapproved of what happened under the existing Biden/Warrenite regime...
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1/ 🚨THE FED'S DEBANKER-IN-CHIEF IS OUT! Michael Barr, the last remaining Biden/Warren appointee who architected #OperationChokePoint2.0 at a federal financial agency, will resign as vice chair for supervision in Feb (see @nic__carter's March 2023 map👇). federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pre…
2/ It was an open secret in DC that Trump was likely to fire him. He had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad reign as Fed Vice Chair for Supervision--the WSJ covered only some of why 👇, calling him "a favorite of Elizabeth Warren" but omitting a lot: wsj.com/opinion/a-fede…
3/ Barr siloed information within the Fed, as of Oct 2022 sending Fed supervision staff a memo prohibiting them from talking to other Fed governors unless they’d spoken with him first👇
1/ NEW FACTS REVEALED: 2 years ago today, the Fed quietly hammered 5 banks & thereby kicked off its industry-wide dragnet against banks serving the #crypto industry. @joerogan & @pmarca recently made discussions about #debanking go mainstream, which makes today’s anniv notable.
2/ On the Sunday after Thanksgiving 2022 (11/27/22), the Fed hit the first of these 5 banks w/ regulatory actions targeting their crypto activities, and its blitz carried into the following work week. Thus began what @nic__carter would later dub #OperationChokePoint2.0.
3/ How did I learn these facts? I pieced together public info + info from insiders who came forward & filled in puzzle pieces for me. I know the 5 banks’ names but won’t disclose them here. Publicly-available info confirms @custodiabank was one of them.
1/ HOW TO FIX THE U.S. DEBANKING PROBLEM, a 🧵by someone who set out to solve it but ended up repeatedly targeted by it (+ whose bank has a lawsuit against the Fed pertaining to it).
This is a #MeToo-type moment in banking, as stories are now pouring out.
How to fix it?
2/ As @pmarca alluded on @joerogan, the levers of power used/abused by federal bank regulators to effectuate #debanking are subtle & insidious. Multiple attempts have already been made to fix the problem. Why did they all fail? bc it's a multi-faceted problem that runs deep.
3/ Truly fixing the problem will require overhauling the federal bank examination process for operating banks. Why? a) subjective levers in federal bank exams have proven to be too easily politicized, b) confidentiality of supervisory info & c) no checks & balances in practice.
1/ CALLING OUT A DOUBLE STANDARD: I chewed on @CampbellJAustin's great🧵about selective enforcement against #crypto while protecting #tradfi, which prompted me to review the FTX fraud. Lo & behold, there seems to be ANOTHER pattern of selective enforcement
2/ The FDIC's Inspector General disclosed that 11 US banks "may have had involvement in alleged wire transfer fraud," & I tweeted the below screenshot of it on February 22, 2023:
1/ I'M STILL THINKING abt the bombshell Silvergate court filing. Here's the Warren crowd's #crypto bank scorecard:
❌Silvergate--suicided
❌Signature--suicided
❌Protego--OCC approval "expired"
〰️Paxos--ditto, but its non-bank is still going
✅ @custodiabank--survived & fighting
2/ Until the court filing, I didn't know the Fed "suicided" Silvergate by forcing it into an untenable choice👇: make #crypto <15% of its deposits (impossible in a short period of time) or throw in the towel. This touched off a bank panic the next day, costing the FDIC ~$40bn.🤦♀️
3/ @BarneyFrank et al made clear at the time that the FDIC "suicided" Signature, but we now know the Fed "suicided" Silvergate too. The timing lines up with the Fed blindsiding @custodiabank with a denial (w/ the White House). It was all coordinated--more than even I realized.
1/ I DUG INTO the Fed's latest master account list, released last night. The big news is what's happening with OCC-chartered trust companies--2 new ones applied for Fed master accounts. This is noteworthy for several reasons, explained below. Data here: federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems…
2/ But first, among the ~430 Fed master account holders that are not FDIC insured (or equivalent), 11 are trust companies chartered by the OCC:
3/ And 4 applicants for new Fed master accounts are OCC-chartered trust companies (of which two were crypto custodians whose applications went inactive amid #OperationChokePoint2.0👇--Paxos "withdrew" in Jan 2024; & Protego's charter approval "expired" in Feb 2023, per the OCC).