The new regulations recently issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) have sparked quite a bit of discussion in the market. Wintermute OTC's Head of Trading Jake recently provided a detailed interpretation: banks can only act as brokers in crypto trading activities, in other words, they serve as intermediaries to facilitate transactions. What does this mean? Simply put, banks cannot use their own funds to hold crypto assets, and therefore cannot engage in proprietary trading. This may seem like a restriction, but it actually clarifies the rules — the legal distinction between agency trading and proprietary investment activities by banks. This has important guiding significance for the compliance framework of the entire industry.