The U.S. Department of Treasury is now going to allow banks to treat public chains as infrastructure similar to SWIFT, ACH and FedWire, and stablecoins like USDC as electronic stored value. Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle, says that the significance of this can’t be understated.

Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO at Circle, discussed the announcement on his Twitter last night:

1/ Breaking major news from US Treasury OCC, the largest US banking regulator (@USOCC), with new guidance allowing US banks to use public blockchains and dollar stablecoins as a settlement infrastructure in the US financial system. https://occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2021/nr-occ-2021-2.html

2/ This is a huge win for crypto and stablecoins – $USDC

3/ The new interpretive letter establishes that banks can treat public chains as infrastructure similar to SWIFT, ACH and FedWire, and stablecoins like USDC as electronic stored value. The significance of this can’t be understated.

4/ Decentralized, permissionless, open source and internet mediated software is literally becoming the foundation for not just the US financial system but for the global economy.

5/ We are on a path towards all major economic activity being executed on-chain. It is tremendous to see such forward thinking support from the largest regulator of national banks in the United States.

6/ This paves the way for the use of leading dollar digital currencies such as USDC as a mainstream payment medium for all forms of payments and settlement, and helps put the US in a leadership position in embracing the power of public blockchains.

7/ Beyond payments and settlement, and unlike legacy settlement mediums, public chains combine transactions and compute, enabling a radically new modes of financial and commerce apps to be built.

9/ It also sets the stage for more regulated financial institutions to run blockchain nodes, and even become validators.

10/ This is a HUGE way to start 2021, the year that crypto and stablecoins go mass market!