The U.S. Government Accountability Office, or GAO, sent a June 8 letter to FDIC Chairman Travis Hill saying the agency has not fully carried out earlier recommendations tied to blockchain oversight. The warning traces back to findings in a July 2023 GAO report, which argued that crypto-related supervision still suffers from weak coordination across major U.S. financial regulators.
GAO says fragmented oversight still leaves gaps
In its earlier review, the GAO said there was no sustained, systematic collaboration among the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the SEC, the CFTC, the NCUA, and the CFPB. The office argued that piecemeal work by separate agencies is not enough for digital assets, and called instead for durable interagency protocols.
The warning comes as blockchain-based financial products become more common. The GAO pointed to custody services, tokenized deposit platforms, and distributed-ledger settlement systems as examples of areas where oversight can slip if agencies do not strengthen joint supervision. That is the central concern. As more financial activity touches blockchain infrastructure, the office said regulatory loopholes can widen.
GENIUS Act adds to the FDIC’s crypto workload
A second issue in the report is the FDIC’s expanded role under the GENIUS Act. The law gives the agency important oversight responsibilities for certain stablecoin issuers operating as subsidiaries of FDIC-supervised banks. That change broadens the FDIC’s mandate in digital asset monitoring and places stablecoin supervision closer to the banking perimeter.
The GAO also noted that Congress is still working on a broader framework for the crypto asset market. Future legislation may define federal jurisdiction in this area more clearly. For now, though, the office continues to treat weak interagency coordination as one of the sector’s main unresolved problems, especially as banks and financial institutions have moved more deeply into digital asset activity over the past two years.
2023 bank failures remain part of the warning
The GAO tied its latest message to the 2023 banking turmoil. In March 2023, Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate Bank, and Signature Bank all collapsed within days. Each had links to the technology or crypto sectors, and those failures raised fresh questions about how such institutions were being supervised.
The office also proposed a procedural change inside the FDIC’s supervision process: rotation programs for case managers. Its reasoning was specific. Keeping the same personnel in the same roles for long periods can weaken neutrality and lower audit quality.
Steps have been taken, but GAO says the response is incomplete
The FDIC has made some changes since earlier GAO recommendations. In July 2025, it joined the Federal Reserve and OCC in preparing crypto risk management guidance. In March 2025, it also changed its approach to crypto activities by removing the requirement that banks notify regulators before certain digital asset transactions.
Even so, the GAO said those efforts do not solve the broader problem. Actions taken by individual agencies, in its view, still fall short of addressing systemic gaps that run across multiple jurisdictions. The message to the FDIC is blunt: crypto oversight is expanding, stablecoin supervision is growing, and coordination among regulators remains unfinished.