Overview

• The central bank discontinued its Novel Activities Supervision Program, which since 2023 had deployed dedicated exam teams to monitor banks’ stablecoin, tokenized securities and distributed-ledger projects.
• Regulators said accumulated experience with digital-asset operations and banks’ risk-management practices justified ending the separate supervisory regime.
• Insights from the program will be integrated into the Fed’s regular safety-and-soundness examinations rather than reviewed under a standalone framework.
• This step follows 2025 moves by the FDIC and OCC to strip subjective barriers such as reputational-risk language and drop pre-approval requirements for crypto services.
• Market participants expect the shift to lower procedural hurdles for banks like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup seeking to expand custody, stablecoin issuance and tokenization offerings.