Bank of America CEO kicks out cryptocurrency

In a recent interview with Yahoo! Financing Bank of America CEO Brian T. Moynihan stressed that the banking giant was in no hurry to dip its toes into cryptocurrency.

“We’re not missing anything. We’re getting the batches through the roof,” Moynihan said.

Recognizing cross-border payments as a legitimate use case for cryptocurrency, Moynihan said strict regulation prevents him from dealing with the emerging asset class.

Bank of America is limited to looking for cryptocurrencies on the trading side, but it can’t go further than managing customer accounts with digital assets. As reported by U.Today, the bank set up a dedicated crypto research team last July.

“They said ‘You have to ask us before you do that, and by the way don’t ask,'” Moynihan commented on the regulatory audit.

Moynihan emphasized the fact that his bank had made significant progress in the field of digitization:

“So, the reality is that we’re running a payments business across our platform. It’s been trillions of dollars every day. Almost all of it is digital.”

According to Bank of America’s latest earnings call, digital channels account for 53% of customer sales. Moynihan estimates the bank has 54 million digital users.

The banker also realized that Bank of America has “hundreds” of patents on the blockchain. In fact, it saw an 86% increase in patents related to blockchain technology in 2021.

Despite accumulating more blockchain patents than any other financial company in the world, Bank of America is not necessarily sold on the technology. In 2019, Cathy Besant, a member of the bank’s executive board, said she was negative about blockchain.