In brief
- President Trump called the practice of denying banking services to crypto companies and conservatives “very bad and very dangerous.”
- Trump said that banking regulators, not banks themselves, drive debanking through intimidation and control.
- The White House is reportedly considering an executive order to prevent regulators from targeting specific groups.
President Donald Trump said Friday that debanking of crypto companies is a “very bad and very dangerous” practice that was likely instigated by the Biden administration, but still remains a problem in the United States.
“There is a lot of debanking,” Trump said in the Oval Office this evening, in response to a question from Decrypt. “Those people are very bad and very dangerous, and they shouldn’t be doing it.”
Debanking refers to the alleged practice of banks denying customers services based on their affiliation with industries like crypto, or their political beliefs. Crypto industry leaders have long argued that during the Biden years, they were routinely denied standard banking services. Conservative public figures, including the president and his family, have made similar claims.
“I can tell you, because I’ve been a victim myself because of my politics, that big banks were very nasty to us,” Trump said Friday of his experience during former President Joe Biden’s White House tenure. “And I actually think it was Biden’s people that told him to be—because the one group of people the banks are afraid of are the regulators.”
President Trump elaborated that he does not blame big banks themselves for participating in such practices, but rather the federal agencies overseeing the industry.
“I’ve seen the biggest banker, I can tell you—you see him on television all the time. If a regulator walked into the room, he gets all nervous and crazy,” Trump said. “The regulators control the banks. It’s not the president of the bank. The president of the bank is far less important to a bank than a regulator, and a regulator can put that bank out of business.”
Decrypt asked Trump on Friday whether he intends to sign an executive order targeting debanking. Such an order could potentially instruct federal bank regulators, including the Federal Reserve, explicitly not to deny services to certain groups or individuals. The Trump administration planned to sign such an executive order back in March, Decrypt previously reported. But those plans were soon after shelved, at least temporarily, multiple sources familiar with the matter said.
The proposal may now be back in action. As of this week, White House officials are considering issuing a debanking-focused executive order, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
On Friday, when asked about such plans, the president did not confirm their existence. But he did say that the problem of debanking persists in the United States, even since his return to power.
Since Trump’s inauguration, federal banking agencies under his control have released documents appearing to confirm the existence of previous directives from the same regulators discouraging member banks from offering crypto services.
Direct evidence has not yet been published, however, that shows such agencies instructing member banks to refuse standard services to individuals who worked in the crypto industry.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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