Bank of America CEO Brian T. Moynihan shared some regulatory challenges with delving into crypto and said that they were not missing out on anything.
Some of the biggest banking institutions on Wall Street have been jumping into crypto amid soaring client demand. However, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) seems to be in no mood to rush into crypto.
During the World Economic Forum last week at Davos, Switzerland. Bank of America CEO Brian T. Moynihan said that they are not willing to dip their toes into crypto as of now. Moynihan has been at the helm of affairs for BoA’s digital banking transformation over the last 12 years. When asked whether they think if they were missing out on the next big thing, Moynihan replied:
“We are not missing on anything. We are driving payments through the roof”.
He further added that it will be more fruitful for BoA to continue doing what they are already doing. During his interview with Yahoo Finance, the BoA CEO said:
“Our big thing is helping consumers in America have a successful financial life. Our life plans, financial planning tool— four or five million users— only started three years ago. That’s what you need to do, is get people to learn how to make their money work more for them to help in their lives.”
Bank of America and Crypto
Although BoA is not willing to dive into the crypto market as of now, it has been taking a few measures. Last year, BoA formed a new research wing for digital assets. During his latest interview, Moynihan also acknowledged instant cross-border payments as an important use case for crypto.
But he also added that a stringent regulatory framework is preventing the bank from actively engaging with the nascent asset class. Commenting on the regulatory scrutiny, Moynihan said:
“They’ve said ‘You have to ask us before you do it, and by the way don’t ask.’ It was basically the tone”.
As a result, BoA is limiting its research to the crypto trading side. However, they cannot go further with offering crypto accounts to customers. He again stressed the fact that the bank is continuing to make significant progress with digital payments. “So, the reality is that we run a payments business across our platform. It was trillions of dollars a day. And almost all of it digital.”
BoA also holds several patents on the blockchain with a lot many filed in the last year of 2021.
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