Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a prominent crypto skeptic, said Wednesday she wants to work with President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans to end the practice of debanking. It demonstrated a marked change in tone on crypto during a Senate hearing focused on allegations that major banks have routinely denied services to industry leaders.
“Debanking is a real problem,” Warren, the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Banking Committee, said during the hearing. “This shouldn’t be happening, and we need to figure out why, and who is responsible.”
That assertive stance may have come as a surprise to some in the digital assets industry, who have regarded Warren for years as an existential enemy.
Some crypto leaders, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, have explicitly blamed Warren for instigating “Operation Chokepoint 2.0,” an alleged Biden-era initiative to secretly pressure banks to not serve crypto-related clients.
And yet, Wednesday’s Senate Banking hearing saw the remarkable scene of Warren herself telling a panel of crypto industry witnesses handpicked by Republicans—who all claimed to have been debanked for years—that she was on their side.
“I don’t think for a second you should be locked out of our banking system,” Warren said to Nathan McCauley, CEO of Anchorage Digital, a crypto infrastructure provider.
Of course, Warren may have her own motives for staking out such a position. At multiple points in the hearing, she touted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal watchdog she helped establish in 2011, as the only government agency explicitly tasked with protecting consumers against debanking practices.
After years of Republican attacks, the CFPB was wound down by Trump earlier this week.
“If the president is serious about stopping debanking, then he needs a strong CFPB as his partner to get this done,” Warren said.
Warren also attempted during Wednesday’s hearing to broaden the concept of groups being targeted by debanking—to nonprofits, the cannabis industry, ex-felons, and Muslim Americans.
Crypto leaders appeared somewhat caught off-guard by Warren’s questions, which enthusiastically took their side. For example, she asked whether the entrepreneurs would support stronger regulations to prevent banks from refusing customers.
At one point though, when asked by Warren to outright name the banks that denied him services due to his crypto affiliation, Anchorage Digital’s CEO pushed back a bit.
“Senator, I don’t believe it’s productive to name individual banks,” McCauley said. “I believe the banks were the victims here.”
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
