A Congressional Research Service report published September 30, 2026 concludes that whether US banks may deal in Bitcoin and other digital assets depends more on who runs the regulators than on anything Congress has written into law. The report, titled "Crypto and Bank-Permissible Activities" (IF13324), describes a supervisory regime it calls ambiguous on paper and fragile in practice.

The CRS, Congress's nonpartisan in-house research arm, traces the pattern of policy reversals back to at least 2017. Since then, the three main federal bank regulators — the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) — have repeatedly flipped their positions on bank crypto activity as the political environment changed.

How did the policy pendulum swing?

The arc the report outlines is familiar to bank compliance teams. The first Trump administration adopted pro-crypto policies. The Biden administration then tightened supervision considerably between 2021 and 2024. In March 2025, the pendulum swung back: the OCC issued Interpretive Letter 1183, easing restrictions on bank digital asset activities.

Each shift arrived through agency action rather than new statute. That is precisely why the CRS considers every current permission reversible — a change in agency leadership or a new presidential administration can undo it without any act of Congress.

For banks, the operational consequence is straightforward. Any institution building a digital asset business line on the strength of an interpretive letter or supervisory non-objection carries policy risk that cannot be priced like ordinary regulatory risk, because it can expire on an election cycle.

What test do regulators actually apply?

The regulators do have a framework. It just does not produce consistent answers.

The two-pronged test asks:

• Is the activity connected to the "business of banking"?
• What safety-and-soundness risks does it introduce?

The trouble, according to the CRS, is a longstanding disagreement among regulators over whether specific crypto activities satisfy either prong. The same activity can look like a natural extension of banking to one official and an unacceptable hazard to the next.

The new report builds on an earlier CRS analysis from February 2025 (R48430), which examined the tighter regulatory measures that followed the collapses of FTX and Signature Bank.

What are Congress's three options?

The CRS lays out three paths for lawmakers:

• Continue deferring to regulators, which effectively accepts more of the same back-and-forth with each change of administration.
• Pass legislation that clearly spells out what banks are permitted or prohibited from doing with crypto.
• Adopt a hybrid, setting some rules in statute while leaving regulators discretion over the rest.

Some statutory groundwork already exists. The GENIUS Act (P.L. 119-27), enacted in July 2025, permits stablecoin issuance by bank subsidiaries. The House has also passed the CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633), which would establish a broader crypto regulatory framework and explicitly allow banks to use digital assets in connection with activities they are already authorized to carry out.

The CRS notes the obvious caveat: passing one chamber is not the same as becoming law. Until the CLARITY Act clears the full legislative process, it remains a proposal rather than a protection.

The upshot for bank strategy is that nothing in the current framework guarantees durability. If the Senate does not act on H.R. 3633, the permissibility of bank Bitcoin activity will continue to turn on the composition of the OCC, the Fed, and the FDIC — and on who occupies the White House after the next election.