Pierre Rochard, CEO of The Bitcoin Bond Company, has formally warned US banking regulators that their sweeping Basel III capital rewrite leaves unresolved how Bitcoin-related activities should be treated.
In a comment submitted March 29 to the Federal Reserve, FDIC, and OCC, Rochard argued agencies cannot finalize rules that determine capital treatment for Bitcoin without clearly explaining the framework.
The regulators' March 19 proposals, which overhaul the US bank capital framework, did not mention Bitcoin, crypto, or digital assets a single time. It leaves uncertainty over how existing categories apply to BTC holdings, lending, custody, and derivatives.
Rochard pointed to the Basel Committee's crypto asset framework, SCO60, which assigns a 1,250% risk weight to unbacked crypto assets like Bitcoin. He pressed regulators to clarify if they intend to adopt that standard, apply it selectively, or rely on existing domestic categories.
By contrast, the same agencies recently issued explicit guidance for tokenized securities, stating they should receive the same capital treatment as their non-tokenized counterparts. Rochard said without comparable clarity for Bitcoin, banks would be left to interpret rules for direct holdings, collateralized lending, custody, and derivatives, increasing industry uncertainty.