What is Operation Choke Point 2.0? Trump promises to end it.

It was one of the many promises made by former President Donald Trump to a cryptocurrency crowd at this year’s Bitcoin conference. Crypto advocates have dubbed efforts to cut off the cryptocurrency industry from banking services “Operation Choke Point 2.0,” and Trump is vowing to end it.

“As president, I will immediately shut down Operation Choke Point 2.0,” Trump said. “They want to choke you, they want to choke you out of business — we’re not gonna let that happen.”

U.S. officials have denied its existence, so what is it? Straight Arrow News asked Chris Giancarlo, former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Trump and current senior counsel and co-chair of the Willkie Digital Works Practice. 

Watch Giancarlo’s answer in the video above. For his thoughts on the seven promises Trump made to the cryptocurrency industry this past weekend, watch here.

Chris Giancarlo: Well, let’s [first] talk about what Operation Chokepoint 1.0 is. And that was during the Obama administration, an unacknowledged — during the time — effort by a number of the financial regulators, largely led by the FDIC, to restrict banking services to legal but unpopular — at least with the Obama administration — activities, such as same-day check cashing, ammunition and gun manufacturing, and a few others.

There was nothing illegal. Congress had not made those activities [illegal], no state had made those activities illegal — in fact, in terms of ammunition and guns, protected by the Second Amendment — and yet, financial regulators were basically informally telling banks or using other means to force banks not to provide banking services. And if an activity is debanked, it’s very hard to engage in lawful commerce.

Congress actually acted on that during the Trump administration, formally ending it. And many people believe that it’s back in action once again. They’re calling it Operation Choke Point 2.0, where banks are finding it very, very difficult to provide banking services to crypto business, crypto trading platforms and other crypto related activities.

Many people feel that there was pressure put on Silvergate Bank, on Signature Bank, on Silicon Valley Bank during the last banking crisis, that had an impact that caused the demise of those banks, or at least played a role in the demise of those banks.

When Trump called for ending this, he actually has experience doing it because he had played a role in ending Choke Point 1.0 and recognizes — and many people in this industry feel — if their inability to get banking service, just simply being turned down by bank after bank, simply because they’re engaged in crypto activities, even though that is lawful, is inappropriate.

So Trump’s statement that he would end that, I think, was an important one and showed a sensitivity to the concerns of the industry.