Who in Crypto met Brian Brooks when he was running OCC?

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Out of more than 1,200 meetings held by Brian Brooks as Acting US Comptroller of the Currency, around 40 were about cryptocurrency or involved someone from the crypto industry.

These meetings involved a wide range of participants in the crypto market, from executives of Fortune 500 companies to the founders of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols.

Brooks’ appointment schedule, obtained by CoinDesk through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, sheds new light on his seven-and-a-half-month tenure as head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the national banking regulator. (The schedule was partially drafted under exemptions related to internal staff rules, agency practices, trade secrets, business or financial information, and personal information.)

Meanwhile, the former Coinbase executive continued an aggressively pro-crypto agenda, issuing interpretive letters that gave traditional financial institutions the green light to get involved in digital asset custody, staking and stable coins. The person Trump nominated has been criticized by Democrats in Congress for spending so much time on crypto during the coronavirus pandemic.

After leaving the OCC in mid-January, he joined the industry as CEO of Binance.US, the global subsidiary of crypto exchanges in the United States.

By the time Mr. Brooks was appointed to the OCC, the U.S. government on a cross-agency basis had been working on digital assets for years, an external spokesperson for Brooks and Binance.US said in an email. The Federal Reserves are working on a digital dollar, the [Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s] work on bitcoin futures, [Securities and Exchange Commission’s] work on securities regulation and increasing banks’ interest and participation in stablecoins and other digital asset projects preceded Mr. Brookss’s arrival at OCC and will continue without a doubt.

Stablecoins on the agenda

His first crypto-related meeting as interim controller, with blockchain lending startup Figure, took place on June 12, 2020, 15 days after his appointment by then-President Donald Trump. This was followed that day by a meeting titled Innovation / Crypto Currency Discussion, which was immediately followed by a call to Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who heads the Senate Banking Committee. It’s not clear if this call was about digital assets, but Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) Discussed crypto issues with Brooks on November 16.

It’s also in this timeline that we get a glimpse of some of the early interagency work on stablecoins, as Brooks had a stablecoins meeting with the Presidents’ Task Force on Financial Markets. Six months after his departure from government, stablecoins are now a hotbed of controversy, with several major US financial regulators publicly calling for the regulation of indexed digital assets.

Brooks also met with license applicants, including Paxos and Anchorage, both of which have obtained a national charter of trust, and First Blockchain Bank and Trust (a subsidiary of Metal Pay) and Figure, both of which have applied for a national banking charter. complete.

He also met fintech heavyweights, including PayPal CEO Dan Schulman, Facebook CEO David Marcus, and heads of peer-to-peer lending platform SoFi and UK digital bank Revolut. It was not clear whether cryptography had been discussed at any of these meetings. But Marcus is Facebook’s blockchain leader, and PayPal launched a digital asset service in 2020. SoFi has a digital asset trading unit. Revolut has been offering crypto trading services since 2017. Brooks also had a meeting with the Treasury Department to discuss Facebook’s controversial Libra stablecoin project, now called Diem.

Discussions about DeFi

The former Acting Controller also made sure to get feedback from the nascent Decentralized Finance (DeFi) market, and one of his last meetings at the OCC was a staking discussion on January 10. In August 2020, Brookss “Prepares For The 08/21 OCC Management Conference included a call to Compound Founder Robert Leshner. About two months later he held a meeting titled MakerDAO call.

Compound is one of the leading decentralized lending protocols on the Ethereum platform. Loans on Compound are extended without authorization, with borrowers only having to deposit the correct amount of crypto collateral. MakerDAO is a protocol that takes Ether, USDC, or BAT holdings as collateral for a dollar-backed stablecoin called dai that is issued specifically for MakerDAO loans.

Again, these meetings foreshadowed the political debates to come, as Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Recently asked President Biden’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler how Congress can empower regulators to master DeFi.

Here is a full list of past Interim Supervisor Meetings that include either stakeholders from the crypto industry or companies with a unit of digital assets:

Interview with Cointelegraphs Kollen Post on June 4, 2020 Interview with CoinDesks Nik De on June 5. An appearance on The Blocks “The Scoop” on June 10th. Outside of press interviews, Brooks’ first crypto meeting was held on June 12 with blockchain Lending startup FigureThe first cryptocurrency agency meeting (“Innovation / Crypto Currency [sic] Discussion ”) took place later on June 12th. Brooks visited the Figure offices on July 7 and met with CEO Mike Cagney. Also a call with Marcus on the evening of November 16th. Another crypto meeting with OCC officials on August 11 A call from Robert Leshner on August 12 that is supposed to be “prepared for the OCC management conference on 8/21”. the former CFTC chairman and advocate for the digital dollar on August 17 is also part of this preparation. An appearance on Circle CEO Jeremy Allaires’ podcast The Money Movement on August 13. He attended a “Cryptocurrency Industry Meeting” on August 25 chaired by Wences Casares of Xapo. Meeting with Revolut on September 2 “Treasury Meeting on Libra” held on September 14 “Stable Coins Follow- Up “on September 15 with the officials of the OCC. Coin Center industry lobbyists on October 2 and October 8 Paxos on October 6 Polychain Capital on October 7 Bitpay on October 7 and also on December 7. 15 Manufacturer DAO call with OCC officials October 8 Anchorage October 23 Investor Mike Novogratz November 5 Regulatory panel for Credit Suisse Blockchain and Digital Assets Symposium November 11 “Future Interpretive Letters on Crypto” with OCC officials November 11 Virtual Interagency Stable Coin Meeting on November 12 A call with Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) on crypto issues on November 16 “PWG StableCoin” on December 9. Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Venture Partners partner, December 11. “Trust Bank Applications” December 14 call “Novel Charter Set-up” with OCC officials December 16-29Paypal CEO Dan Schulman, December 18, Caitlin Long, Wyoming blockchain advocate and founder from Avanti Bank on December 18, Teddy Fusaro from Bitwise on December 18. 18 “First Blockchain Bank” January 6 “Figure and OCC” January 7 “staking discussion” January 10.Valor Roundtable: Digital & Cryptocurrencies January 11 Elliptical webinar on January 13

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