Anthony Noto, CEO of SoFi.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said the fintech bank will bring back cryptocurrency investing this year after a “fundamental shift” in the regulatory landscape under the Trump administration.
SoFi was forced to drop crypto investing in late 2023 as a condition of receiving a bank charter in a time of heightened federal scrutiny of digital assets. Customers, who had access to more than 20 crypto coins at the time, were either shunted to Blockchain.com or liquidated their holdings.
But after new guidance from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the technology company is planning an aggressive push back into crypto, Noto told CNBC late Monday in an interview.
“We’re going to re-enter the crypto business, which we had to exit,” Noto said. “We’ll re-enter the business of allowing our members to invest in cryptocurrency. We want to actually make a bigger, more comprehensive push into cryptocurrency [this time], to include really providing crypto or blockchain capabilities in each product area that we have.”
The SoFi announcement is early proof that banks are looking to push further into crypto in the Trump era. In January, the CEOs of Bank of America and Morgan Stanley said that their institutions were ready to get involved in crypto. At the same time, crypto firms including Circle and BitGo are planning to apply for bank charters or licenses, further blurring the lines between traditional and digital finance.
SoFi should be able to offer crypto investing by year-end, barring unforeseen circumstances, Noto said.
After that, over the next six to 24 months, SoFi will look to adopt crypto or its underlying technology in all of the company’s major product lines. That process could be accelerated with acquisitions, he added.
Noto said that he expected the current regulatory environment, in which Trump appointees rolled back restrictions around crypto and a regulatory framework for stablecoins is making its way through Congress, to allow the company to further expand beyond investing.
He specifically cited a recent letter “that basically said that OCC-regulated banks can operate in crypto businesses, and that is a fundamental shift in the regulatory landscape.”
“Our aspirations are as broad as they are for any other product that we have, and we believe we can leverage the technology across lending and savings and spending and investing and protecting,” Noto said.
Future products could include borrowing cash based on the value of crypto held with SoFi, as well as using crypto in payments, Noto said.
