Running a crypto business without reliable banking has become an increasingly prevalent problem globally because, as things stand, in Europe alone, 86% of digital asset firms either don't have or have failed to open a merchant bank account (with many operators having had their accounts closed without prior notice, often with no formal explanation provided).
The problem has only continued to become more deep-rooted, with a Q4 2025 report by the U.S. House Financial Services Committee showing how, over the last 4 years (i.e., between 2021 and Q1 2025), federal prudential regulators used informal guidance and supervisory posture to discourage banks from serving lawful digital asset businesses.
The report didn't reveal anything the industry hadn't already experienced firsthand, but it put formal weight behind what crypto founders had been describing for years, namely account closures without prior notice, declined merchant account applications, and the absence of any clear recourse when either happened.
And while some movement on the regulatory side was made recently, with the U.S. Federal Reserve, FDIC, and OCC jointly withdrawing their prior crypto risk statements and issuing revised guidance to drop categorical discouragements in favor of standard risk-management considerations, it hasn't immediately translated into changed behavior at the compliance desk level.
Why the Problem Doesn't Go Away Even When the Rules Change
Part of what makes these bottlenecks persistent is that, at their core, they aren’t regulatory problems but risk-management ones. Banks with retail deposit bases and broad consumer exposure have their own incentives to avoid association with high-risk merchant categories, and crypto tends to land in that bucket regardless of the legal status of the business in question.
SOL