

Chris Waller didn’t try to dress it up.
The Federal Reserve governor was asked about the recent crypto sell-off and treated it like something he’s seen before. Because he has. At a conference on Monday, Waller said the surge of excitement that followed Donald Trump’s election win has cooled now that crypto is more tangled up with traditional finance.
The mood changed when the players changed.
As more Wall Street firms moved in, the trading stopped looking like early-cycle crypto. Big firms manage risk for a living. When volatility hits, they don’t wait it out. They reduce exposure. According to Waller, that routine repositioning helped push prices lower. Not fear. Not panic. Just firms doing what they always do.
He didn’t sound concerned. Crypto goes up. Crypto comes down. That’s the deal. People make money. People lose money. Waller said anyone who can’t live with that probably shouldn’t be there in the first place.
Bitcoin’s numbers back up the point. After touching roughly $125,000 in October, it’s down about 45%, trading near $69,500 after briefly slipping below $60,000 late last week. For Waller, that kind of swing doesn’t mean the market is broken. It means it’s volatile. Always has been.
What’s weighing on sentiment more, he said, is Washington. Congress still hasn’t passed a crypto market structure bill, leaving firms unsure how digital assets will be regulated. That uncertainty matters, especially for institutions that don’t like guessing games.
Waller also spoke about the Fed’s plan to introduce limited payment accounts for fintech and crypto firms. The idea often called “skinny” master accounts would give access to the payments system without the full privileges banks enjoy. No interest. Balance limits. Fewer bells and whistles. The comment period just closed, and Waller said the Fed is now sorting through a heavy stack of feedback, with hopes of finalizing the plan by the end of the year.
To him, the crypto hype fading isn’t a red flag. It’s what happens when an industry stops feeling new and starts behaving like the rest of finance.





