Summarize and humanize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in English
The Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision, Michelle Bowman, urged the Fed to allow staff to hold de minimis amounts of crypto to gain practical understanding, proposing limited personal investment while the bank builds a supervisory framework for digital assets.
Fed staff should be allowed small crypto holdings to build practical expertise.
Bowman says easing rules could improve recruitment and rulemaking for digital-asset oversight.
Most Fed employees are currently barred from crypto ownership after 2022 investment-rule changes.
Fed crypto ownership: Michelle Bowman urges limited crypto holdings for staff to improve oversight — read how this could shape Federal Reserve policy.
What is the Federal Reserve’s proposed change to staff crypto ownership?
The Federal Reserve’s proposed change would permit staff to hold small, de minimis amounts of crypto or digital assets to gain hands-on experience. Michelle Bowman, the Fed vice chair for supervision, suggested this step at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium to support better rulemaking and recruitment.
How would allowing Fed staff crypto holdings improve supervision?
Allowing modest personal holdings would let examiners and policymakers understand transaction flows, custody, and market mechanics first-hand. Bowman argued practical exposure complements academic study and can reduce talent gaps when hiring examiners familiar with distributed ledger technology.
Fed vice chair for supervision Michelle Bowman said at a blockchain event in Wyoming on Tuesday that the regulator should consider allowing its staff “to hold de minimus amounts of crypto or other types of digital assets so they can achieve a working understanding of the underlying functionality.”
“We will soon be establishing a framework for supervising issuers of these assets,” she added.
“There’s no replacement for experimenting and understanding how that ownership and transfer process flows.”
Currently, most Fed staffers and their spouses are barred from owning crypto or products that concentrate on crypto, such as exchange-traded funds or shares in crypto companies.
The Fed tightened its rules on all investments in early 2022 after it was revealed that three top officials had unusual trading activity in 2020, as the regulator took action to support the US economy in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
