OCC Issues Another Crypto-Friendly Interpretive Letter: Permissibility Of Riskless Principal Crypto-Assets Transactions

On December 9, 2025, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued Interpretive Letter 1188 (IL 1188), confirming that a national bank is permitted, as part of the business of banking, to engage in riskless principal crypto-assets transactions.

Background

IL 1188 specifies that a "riskless principal transaction" is one in which "an intermediary purchases an asset from one counterparty for immediate resale to a second counterparty, the ultimate purchaser of the asset," and whereby the "intermediary's purchase of the asset from the initial counterparty is conditioned on an offsetting order from the second counterparty to purchase the same asset from the intermediary." A national bank, as the intermediary, would generally not hold any asset in connection with a riskless principal transaction, but rather conducts itself as the "legal and economic equivalent" of a broker acting as an agent.