Crypto and Trump gang up on FDIC over debanking: ‘Our story is pretty ridiculous’
A US Postal Service worker outside a Signature Bank branch in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, on Wednesday, March 15, 2023.
Angus Mordant | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley wants everyone to know what happened to his crypto company in 2023 during the Biden administration.
“Our story is pretty ridiculous,” McCauley told CNBC in an interview after testifying at a Senate hearing, titled, “Investigating the Real Impacts of Debanking in America,” earlier this month. “We had a bank that we had a growing relationship with for a number of years, who basically on a dime, decided to turn off our bank account.”
No explanation. No warning. After two years working with the bank, access was cut off. He didn’t name the bank and an Anchorage spokesperson said the company is declining to provide it.
McCauley’s peers across the crypto industry have shared similar sagas about being locked out of the U.S. financial system, losing access to payroll, checking accounts and payment processing. Industry leaders call it “Operation Choke Point 2.0,” an alleged coordinated effort by regulators during the Biden presidency to pressure banks into severing ties with crypto. The 1.0 version, they say, occurred when the Obama administration went after banks that backed gun manufacturers and payday lenders.
With the word “debanking,” crypto execs and investors have found immediate allies among top Republicans in both houses of Congress and in the White House, who are ready and willing to investigate any potential malfeasance that occurred when Democrats were in charge.
President Donald Trump has coopted the agenda for political gain. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month, he accused JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America of politically motivated debanking, claiming major financial institutions have shut out conservatives under pressure from regulators. The banks denied the claim and Trump hasn’t provided any evidence to back it up.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) has tied himself closely to Trump and, as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, used his opening remarks at the hearing on Feb. 5, to echo the president’s sentiment.
“It is incredibly alarming and disheartening to hear stories about financial institutions cutting off services to digital asset firms, political figures, and conservative-aligned businesses and individuals,” Scott said.
Nathan McCauley, co-founder and chief executive officer of Anchorage Digital Bank, during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images
For crypto industry leaders like McCauley, Republican leadership in Washington has provided a platform to publicly air their grievances.
McCauley, whose company is a federally chartered crypto bank, recounted Anchorage’s abrupt loss of banking services in June 2023. He said that while his company has faced numerous challenges, the environment has been even worse for less-established startups.
“You can only imagine what was happening to the smaller entrepreneurs who didn’t have the resources to be able to marshal in order to keep their bank accounts open,” McCauley told CNBC.
In his testimony to Scott’s committee, McCauley said that after losing access to its banking services, Anchorage had to lay off 20% of its workforce, including 70 U.S. employees. To this day, clients are unable “to send wire transfers to third parties,” he said.
The high-profile hearings so early in Trump’s second administration underscore the sudden influence of the crypto industry, which was instrumental in getting its favored candidates elected across the country in November.
Crypto exchange Coinbase was one of the top corporate donors in the 2024 election cycle, giving more than $75 million to a group called Fairshake and its affiliate PACs, including a fresh pledge of $25 million to support the pro-crypto super PAC in the 2026 midterms. Ripple doled out around around $50 million.
Coinbase and Ripple were both involved in protracted legal battles with the SEC under former Chairman Gary Gensler.
Returning the favor
Trump is paying them back in a variety of ways.
His executive order on crypto promises “fair and open access” to financial services. And Trump appointed venture capitalist David Sacks, a longtime ally of Elon Musk, as the White House’s first AI and crypto czar.
Meanwhile, the SEC has already signaled a rollback of rules that previously kept banks from holding bitcoin on their balance sheets, and the FDIC is under pressure to revise guidelines that made it harder for banks to serve digital asset companies.
Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal testified before the House Financial Services Committee on Feb. 6, along with Fred Thiel, CEO of bitcoin miner MARA Holdings. In a hearing titled “Operation Choke Point 2.0: The Biden Administration’s Efforts to Put Crypto in the Crosshairs,” they described aggressive pressure from U.S. regulators to effectively push banks to cut ties with crypto firms.
“No one wants to see anyone denied basic banking services on the basis of their political views or whether they happen to work in an industry that might be out of favor with the current administration,” Grewal told CNBC. “There are concerns across the political aisle and across the Congress that banking services have in the past been weaponized in order to run roughshod over those who may be out of favor.”
The FDIC last week released hundreds of pages of internal records obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The documents show that the regulator sent “pause letters,” urging banks to rethink their relationships with crypto clients.
Nic Carter, founder of Castle Island Ventures, has spent months chronicling revelations in the Choke Point investigation. He said the FDIC records show that banks were being pressured to avoid crypto clients even in the absence of clear laws.
“Ultimately, the smoking gun is the communications between the regulators and the banks themselves,” Carter said
As part of its probe, the House committee is investigating claims that bank executives and financial regulators secretly blacklisted crypto firms.
Thiel, in his testimony, said that the “discriminatory banking and financial policies threaten the digital asset ecosystem” and that “banks and payment processors are effectively deciding which industries can exist and grow within the U.S. economy.”
Closure of Silvergate, Signature
Among the Choke Point incidents that most caught the ire of crypto investors were the forced closures of Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank in 2023, following the meltdown at Sam Bankman Fried’s FTX months earlier. Silvergate and Signature were the leading FDIC-insured banks for crypto firms.
Silvergate Capital, the bank’s parent, acknowledged in its bankruptcy filing last year that there had been a “rapid contraction” of it business in early 2023, but said it had “stabilized” and was able to “meet regulatory capital requirements” and “had the capability to continue to serve its customers.”
Silivergate attributed its insolvency to “increased supervisory pressure on Silvergate and other banks focused on servicing crypto-asset businesses.”
Signature Bank was seized by regulators in March 2023. Former Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, a Signature board member, claimed that the FDIC shut it down specifically “to send a very strong anti-crypto message.” The FDIC arranged a sale of Signature’s assets, excluding $4 billion in crypto-related deposits.
Mike Lempres, who was chairman of Silvergate and previously spent two years as Coinbase’s legal chief, wrote in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal this week that the “federal government is finally changing course after four years of vilifying cryptocurrencies and using legally dubious policies to force companies to bend to its will.”
While the crypto industry at large is rallying around that message, many in Congress are focused on making the case that banks were targeting conservatives for their political views. Carter said lawmakers are trying to reach a wider audience because “most regular folks don’t care about crypto.”
“I think this was a political choice made by the folks in Congress and the administration that are going after debanking, was to tack on the conservative stuff as well,” Carter said. “So it became an issue with a much broader appeal.”
For Trump, there’s more to gain from crypto than just political points. There’s potentially lots of money involved.
Before he was even back in office, Trump and First Lady Melania Trump had already launched meme coins that instantly added billions of dollars in paper value to the family’s net worth, in addition to the tens of millions of dollars the projects earned in trading fees.
A week into his term, Trump launched Truth.Fi, a financial arm of Trump Media, promising ETFs, cryptocurrency investments, and “Patriot Economy” assets — all custodied with $250 million at Charles Schwab.
Musk, meanwhile is at the center of the Trump administration and has his own project underway. He’s positioning his social media platform X as an alternative online bank, enabling users to move funds between traditional bank accounts and their digital wallets to make instant peer-to-peer payments.
The good vibes are being expressed across the industry.
“it’s a brand new day for crypto in America,” said David Marcus, the former head of crypto at Meta and current CEO of infrastructure startup Lightspark, in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week. What’s happening under Trump, he said, is “quite a polarity flip of atmosphere and energy for our entire industry.”
WATCH: Lightspark CEO David Marcus on the new era for crypto
Tesla Cybertruck and the new Model 3 have both fallen short of the top marks in IIHS’ latest round of crash tests.
Over the years, Tesla has consistently earned top safety ratings from various agencies, but this time it could get it from IIHS.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) released its latest batch of safety ratings following a new wave of crash tests.
Two Tesla vehicles were part of the batch: the 2025 Cybertruck and 2025 Model 3.
They both received “good” safety ratings from IIHS, but they fell short of being considered “top safety picks” due to some smaller issues.
For the Cybertruck, its headlights were rated “poor”:
The Cybertruck’s headlights were also downgraded because the low beams created excessive glare.
The overall crash test performance was almost entirely “good”:
Here’s a video of some of the Cybertruck crash tests:
IIHS mentions that this crash test is only relevant for the Cybertruck starting in April 2025 due to Tesla having made “changes to the front underbody structure” after that.
For Model 3, IIHS’ crash test concluded that there’s an elevated risk for rear passengers due to the seat belts:
In the case of the Model 3, however, measurements taken from the rear dummy indicate a somewhat elevated risk of chest injuries due to high belt forces.
The rest of the results from the crash tests were good:
Here are videos of the crash tests for the 2025 Tesla Model 3:
Earlier this year, Electrek reported that Tesla’s top crash safety architect left the company.
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We’ve been following Rivian’s quest to develop an in-house electric two-wheeler for years now, dating back to 2022 when we spotted them poaching top electric bicycle talent from companies like Specialized. But despite years of development work, no one on the outside really knows what the company’s micromobility startup ALSO is truly working on. And thanks to several strange teaser videos shared by the apparent skunkworks program, we still don’t know.
We had a pretty good idea that the company has its sights set on an honest-to-goodness electric bicycle, at least based on what Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said back in 2023.
Rivian spun out a startup called ALSO to focus its micromobility work, and they’ve been hard at work both on and offline. ALSO’s social media team has kept up a steady drip of eclectic teasers, often showcasing a single component without any explanation or background. And it appears they’ve spent big ad money on getting those teasers in front of a large audience.
For example, one post showcases the copper windings of two different motor stators, showcasing what appears to be two different sizes of relatively small-diameter hub motors, though perhaps one is the stator of a mid-drive motor. Two motors would be surprising on an electric bicycle. While it’s been done many times, dual motors are usually found on out-of-class e-bikes that are essentially small electric motorcycles skirting motorcycle laws. A single motor is plenty powerful for street-legal e-bikes, and thus dual motors would only seem necessary on something intended for more power than a typical electric bicycle.
Another clip shows a control board that has a surprisingly large footprint for something that would conceivably be stored in the frame or body of a conventional electric bicycle. It also looks to have connections for two different motor phase wires, implying driving a pair of motors from the single board. Back in 2010, I headed up an electric bicycle startup developing a model with a completely enclosed front triangle, which could be a solution that would support housing such large-format electronic components within ALSO’s presumed e-bike.
A window in the large circuit board also gives us a partial view of a pair of wheels that seem roughly bicycle-sized, also revealing a conventional fork and disc brake rotor on the wheel.
The potential for dual motors and some large fairing to conceal that circuit board would imply the possibility of something larger than a typical e-bike, perhaps even a moped or light electric motorcycle. The same clip also appears to reveal an engineer working on a gray metal component that looks suspiciously like a rear swing arm, which would lead us to believe that the bike would feature rear suspension.
Despite some of those clues that would imply something bigger or more powerful than a typical e-bike, other teasers show people “riding” along a sidewalk on invisible bikes, miming pedaling actions, which would imply functional pedals. And another teaser displays a belt pulley of what could be a belt drive on the pedal drivetrain, though it could also be a final drive coming from a centrally mounted motor.
In yet another strange post, the bike is completely blurred out, but we can see a rider holding what are likely a set of handlebars awkwardly close to his waist, which would be a position more commonly seen on a standing electric scooter than on an e-bike or e-motorcycle. However, he may also be straddling the bike and simply standing closer to the bars.
He also appears to be wearing a jacket with back armor, something rarely seen among e-bike riders but much more common in the motorcycling world (though I’ve advocated for it on e-bikes, too).
On the other hand, the bike or skate helmet worn by the rider still implies that we’re back in the bike world, not the moto-world.
Keeping the hype train rolling, another short video shows a partial view of the battery in various stages of assembly. The cylindrical cells look like 18650 or 21700 cells, used in many electric vehicles, but most commonly light electric motorbikes and e-bikes. While the camera is too zoomed in to determine the size of the battery, it looks like the cells are arranged in a fairly tightly packed configuration with frequent and close-spaced reversing of the cells. This is done to weld the cells in series – a necessary step for increasing the voltage of the pack.
But the fairly small number of cells grouped together in a single orientation, perhaps as few as six (though it could be more due to the limited framing of the shot), would imply a somewhat small battery by motorcycle standards, potentially around 20Ah or less, if using relatively common 3.5Ah 18650 cells arranged in a 6p configuration. That puts us back in electric bicycle territory (or an underspec’d electric moped), though there could be multiple battery packs to increase the overall capacity.
But pushing back towards something larger is the sophisticated LED lighting setup, which uses two powerful LED segments to create what might be a high/low beam configuration. We rarely see such powerful lighting on electric bikes and find this setup more often on seated electric scooters and motorbikes. But then again, ALSO is part of Rivian and thus would easily benefit from Rivian’s automotive-level components and supply chain.
Then there’s a censored shot of two people on the bike in question, with a child strapped into a kid’s safety seat, implying a utility or cargo bike configuration that can allow for a passenger on the rear rack.
Plus, to make things even more interesting, these shots are all interspersed with artistic designs, strange kinetic wind art, penguin furries, crystal prisms, nature themes, and other seemingly random motifs that either point to the artistic whims of ALSO’s social media folks or are just random red herrings to confuse us further.
Basically, there are many clues, some of them seemingly contradictory, none of which really tell us that much more than we already knew, which is that ALSO is building personal electric vehicles of some unknown type.
The company says all will be revealed on October 22, so we’re on the edge of our seats waiting for that reveal. It could be a major shakeup in the industry, or the company could go the route of basically every other automotive company that tried to build an e-bike and failed miserably. Time will tell.
But there’s one thing I can say for sure. I’ve covered e-bikes longer than just about anyone else in this industry, and this is the weirdest freaking launch lead-up I’ve ever seen.
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Ford blamed slowing demand for electric vehicles after announcing plans to slash another 1,000 jobs at its Cologne EV plant in Germany.
Ford cuts jobs in Germany over weak demand for EVs
In a press release on Thursday, Ford announced plans to cut another 1,000 jobs at its plant in Cologne, Germany.
“In Europe, demand for electric cars remains well below industry forecasts,” the company said. Ford is blaming weak demand for EVs, saying it will move from a two-shift operation to a single-shift operation, starting in January.
The proposed plans from last year include cutting about 4,000 jobs in Europe by the end of 2027, or about 14% of its European workforce. The job cuts will be primarily in Germany and the UK as part of a broader restructuring. Tuesday’s announcement will raise it by another 1,000.
Earlier this year, Ford faced a historic worker strike in Cologne that disrupted production. The news announced on Tuesday will likely affect vehicle production again.
Ford currently builds electric vehicles, including the Explorer and Capri, in Cologne, but it’s facing new competition from BYD and other low-cost EV makers from China.
Although Ford is blaming weaker-than-expected demand for EVs, according to the latest data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), 1,011,903 battery electric vehicles (BEVs) were registered in the EU in the first seven months of 2025, led by increases in Spain (94.5%), Germany (59,2%), and Italy (60.3%).
If you look at the most recent registration data from the German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA), Ford registered 10,924 BEVs in Germany through August, or less than 15% of the nearly 74,000 vehicles it sold.
The shortcomings come despite Ford investing nearly €2 billion ($2.4 billion) to upgrade the facility to produce electric vehicles. Ford also offers the Puma Gen-E, the electric version of its best-selling vehicle in Europe. It was the first EV to qualify for the full £3,750 ($5,000) discount from the UK’s recently launched Electric Car Grant program.
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