by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack
SOUTH BRONX/SDNY, Oct 6 – With the US Congress passing the cryptocurrency GENIUS Act, Ripple Labs as well as Circle and others, have applied for banking charters to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Now Brazil's Nubank said it has applied - but it is listed as deleted. Inner City Press has FOIAed:
"Nubank has said publicly it has applied to the OCC. But on the OCC website site today, there are three applications listed, one listed as "DELETED" but all three with comment periods expiring October 30 (hence the request for expedited treatment, which the FRB among others routinely grants - is the OCC such an outlier, and if so, why?) We ask that the application(s) be emailed to us today
I suggest that all three applications, and those like them, be placed in the OCC's FOIA reading room - and list of Digital Assets Licensing Applications where it is not list listed, with the most recent being Paxos in August. Inner City Press also wants the announced applications of Stripe and Coinbase..."
On July 18, Fair Finance Watch filed timely opposition to Ripple's application:
On behalf of Fair Finance Watch, this is a timely comment in opposition to the application to charter the proposed Ripple National Trust Bank. This cookie-cutter application, for which inappropriate requests for confidential treatment have been made, explains virtually nothing about what New York City-based RNTB would do.
The application states that it would be exempt from the Community Reinvestment Act - FFW disagrees - and does not make any of the required showing of meeting convenience and needs of community, or being of any public benefit. Perhaps some such information is in the improperly withheld portions of the application. Inner City Press earlier this week submitted two FOIA requests, neither of which has been responded to in any way. (The requests also concern Circle's proposed bank - tellingly, Ripple uses the same Paul Hastings parters as Circle, and the applications are nearly identical, creating problems both of credibility and, for the record, of antitrust). The comment period should be extended.
For now, as to Ripple under the statutory factors that must be considered including managerial resources, consider: "Ripple’s CEO distances firm from federal investigations into Linqto’s shares scandal," and "Is Ripple at Risk?" In terms of lack of transparency, consider for the record: "Is Ripple Selling XRP Behind the Scenes? On-Chain Clues Emerge."
FFW will have more to say when it receives responses to its and Inner City Press' FOIA requests. On the current record, the application(s) could not legitimately be approved.
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