The industry’s ongoing campaign against the debanking of crypto businesses and leaders has secured a legislative push from a top U.S. senator, Tim Scott, who is championing a bill that would cut out federal banking regulators’ ability to use “reputational risk” as a reason to steer banks away from customers.
That practice had been cited by Republicans as a problem area in recent congressional hearings, which examined how digital assets businesses had been systematically cut out of U.S. banking relationships because of perceptions that the regulators — including the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — didn’t want them there.
As the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, South Carolina’s Tim Scott has rounded up fellow Republicans on that panel to back the bill — the Financial Integrity and Regulation Management Act, or FIRM Act — that cuts that phrase from any…
