Jun 11, 2026 · 12 min · 9 segments
Crypto just scored a major breakthrough: regulators are now forced to clear a path for crypto firms to access the US banking system. But beneath the headlines, a battle is raging over who truly wins?…
Now, before we get into what the executive order actually changes, you need to understand just how brutal the deep banking era really got, because the story being sold right now is that Trump simply ended a regulatory mistake, but the honest framing is something else entirely.
Between 2022 and 2024, the FDIC, the OCC, and the Federal Reserve ran a coordinated supervisory campaign that effectively locked American crypto firms out of the banking system.
It wasn't done through formal rulemaking.
It was done through pause letters, joint statements, and a vague catch-all called reputational risk that gave examiners nearly unlimited discretion to shut things down.
A December 2025 House Financial Services Committee report documented at least 30 crypto entities and individuals losing banking access.
Founders flew to Switzerland just to execute payroll and personal accounts of executives were closed without any warning whatsoever.
That's the backdrop.
Let's start with Silvergate, because Silvergate was the only real-time crypto payment network the industry actually had in the United States.
When FTX collapsed in November 2022, Silvergate hemorrhaged $8.1 billion in digital asset deposits in a single quarter, a 68% collapse in its crypto deposit book, which at the time made up roughly 90% of the bank's entire deposit base.
Just gone.
To cover withdrawals, it sold securities at approximately a $718 million loss and borrowed $4.3 billion from federal home loan banks.
On March 8th, 2023, it announced voluntary liquidation.
Former chief risk officer Kate Frar and analyst Nick Carter both alleged that the wind down wasn't voluntary at all, but the result of supervisory pressure demanding crypto deposits be capped at 15% of total liabilities.
So it basically was a business model death sentence dressed up as a corporate decision.
Four days later, Signature Bank was seized by the New York Department of Financial Services and here's the part almost all coverage skips.
When the FDIC sold Signature's assets to Flagster Bank on March 19th, the agreement explicitly excluded approximately $4 billion in deposits tied to Signature's digital asset business.
And Signet, Signature's real-time settlement platform used by virtually every major crypto firm, simply vanished overnight.
Former representative Bonnie Frank, who sat on Signature's board, said publicly that the seizure was designed to send a message to crypto.
And of course, we should absolutely trust that the timing of two crypto-friendly banks dying in the same week with no surviving alternatives was completely coincidental, right? Yeah, of course.
Now, before we get into what the executive order actually changes, you need to understand just how brutal the deep banking era really got, because the story being sold right now is that Trump simply ended a regulatory mistake, but the honest framing is something else entirely.
Between 2022 and 2024, the FDIC, the OCC, and the Federal Reserve ran a coordinated supervisory campaign that effectively locked American crypto firms out of the banking system.
It wasn't done through formal rulemaking.
It was done through pause letters, joint statements, and a vague catch-all called reputational risk that gave examiners nearly unlimited discretion to shut things down.
A December 2025 House Financial Services Committee report documented at least 30 crypto entities and individuals losing banking access.
Founders flew to Switzerland just to execute payroll and personal accounts of executives were closed without any warning whatsoever.
That's the backdrop.
Let's start with Silvergate, because Silvergate was the only real-time crypto payment network the industry actually had in the United States.
When FTX collapsed in November 2022, Silvergate hemorrhaged $8.1 billion in digital asset deposits in a single quarter, a 68% collapse in its crypto deposit book, which at the time made up roughly 90% of the bank's entire deposit base.
Just gone.
To cover withdrawals, it sold securities at approximately a $718 million loss and borrowed $4.3 billion from federal home loan banks.
On March 8th, 2023, it announced voluntary liquidation.
Former chief risk officer Kate Frar and analyst Nick Carter both alleged that the wind down wasn't voluntary at all, but the result of supervisory pressure demanding crypto deposits be capped at 15% of total liabilities.
So it basically was a business model death sentence dressed up as a corporate decision.
Four days later, Signature Bank was seized by the New York Department of Financial Services and here's the part almost all coverage skips.
When the FDIC sold Signature's assets to Flagster Bank on March 19th, the agreement explicitly excluded approximately $4 billion in deposits tied to Signature's digital asset business.
And Signet, Signature's real-time settlement platform used by virtually every major crypto firm, simply vanished overnight.
Former representative Bonnie Frank, who sat on Signature's board, said publicly that the seizure was designed to send a message to crypto.
And of course, we should absolutely trust that the timing of two crypto-friendly banks dying in the same week with no surviving alternatives was completely coincidental, right? Yeah, of course.
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