The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) has started a new campaign they say is designed to protect local communities and consumers from the risks posed by the accelerated adoption of crypto products and services that lack the same level of regulation and consumer protection as the banking sector.
“Community banks are the backbone of Main Street,” said ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey. “Americans care about their local economies, but most are unaware of the risks of giving crypto conglomerates a free pass.”
The campaign will launch with an advertisement highlighting the essential services community banks provide for local economies, what matters to Americans, and the real drivers of crypto policy. The ad transcript is below:
“Community banks make sixty percent of small business loans and eighty percent of farm loans.
Community banks protect your money with strong oversight and FDIC insurance.
Polls consistently rank crypto at the very bottom of issues important to American voters.
But crypto insiders are pushing for less accountability—and more risk.
American families don’t want experiments with their money.
They want jobs, growth, and available credit.
When crypto gets a free pass, communities pay the price.”
ICBA says Community banks provide $4.1 trillion in local loans, make nearly 60 percent of U.S. small-business loans under $1 million and more than 80 percent of banking industry agricultural loans. Allowing digital asset entities to pay interest or yield on payment stablecoins would significantly reduce community banks’ ability to support local lending needs, with a projected $1.3 trillion in potential lost deposits leading to an $850 billion decline in lending activity. Americans care about their communities, with 79 percent saying locally based lending decisions are important when choosing where to bank, while establishing cryptocurrency rules rated near the bottom on a list of issues voters care about.
Built on a foundation of consumer protection decades in the making and strengthened by the technology of tomorrow, community banks understand local economies and rural customer needs in ways crypto conglomerates cannot replicate. ICBA is calling on policymakers to ensure crypto is subject to appropriate regulation to protect American communities.
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