NAFCU offers insight on digital assets regulatory environment

The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU) has issued a brief outlining the regulatory environment surrounding digital assets’ integration into the broader economy.

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The NAFCU indicated the Digital Assets Brief seeks to aid credit unions in navigating technical digital asset conversations while also better positioning credit unions to compete equitably within the digital asset space.

“The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions is committed to ensuring credit unions remain competitive and has already helped spur the publication of much-needed digital asset guidance from the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA),” the NAFCU wrote in the brief’s Executive Summary. “However, we remain in the early stages of digital assets’ evolution, adoption, and integration into the broader economy. Those digital asset conversations that do not get unnecessarily mired in technical jargon are all too often peppered with largely meaningless buzz words. This Digital Assets Issue Brief is intended to help cut through that noise and better position credit unions to compete on a level digital assets playing field.”

The NAFCU cited recent correspondence to the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee regarding the President’s Working Group (PWG) on Financial Markets’ report on stablecoins. It cautioned how a lack of a clear regulatory environment and supervisory framework poses risks to adopting promising technologies that include digital assets.

“The goal is to help readers better understand the meaningful differences between cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs); how different digital asset networks operate; how digital assets are currently being used and may be used; and how federal agencies and Congress are approaching digital assets’ early regulation,” the NAFCU concluded via the Executive Summary.