(Bloomberg) -- Wall Street banks’ interest in crypto has significantly fallen off as digital-asset prices have tumbled, according to a top US financial regulator. 

“A lot of the crypto curiosity went away,” Michael Hsu, acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, said in an interview at Bloomberg’s Washington bureau on Thursday. “I would be astounded if a lot of banks were saying, ‘Hey, I really want to get into crypto’ now.” 

It’s a stark difference from the interest that banks showed at the end of last year, when the price of Bitcoin, the largest digital asset, was at an all-time high and the total crypto market was worth more than $3 trillion, he added. The industry “took off” and there was a lot of “FOMO,” he said, referring to an acronym that stands for “fear of missing out.”

The crypto industry has seen its fair share of turmoil over the past few months with the price of tokens plummeting, the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin and, more recently, FTX’s implosion. The current “crypto winter” has given US banking regulators more time to mull substantive guidance on issues such as crypto custody, Hsu said.

Read More: Warren Presses Fed’s Powell on Bank-Crypto Links Following FTX

The OCC, Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced a “policy sprint” on crypto assets last November. There was urgency to weigh in given the intense interest from banks. That work continues, but agencies can now take their time and be more deliberate, he said.

The implosion of FTX placed new scrutiny on banks with crypto business after it was revealed that a number of lenders, including some regulated in the US, had relationships with the failed exchange and its sister company, Alameda Research. Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith, have called for the OCC, Fed and FDIC to conduct a broad review of banks’ exposure to the digital-asset market.  

The OCC previously has said banks that want to get involved in crypto activities must first notify and get the agency’s go-ahead. 

According to Hsu, contagion from failures within the digital-asset industry, including FTX, hasn’t spread to the banking sector due to what he referred to as the regulator’s “careful and cautious” approach.

However, he said he’s always concerned about banks potentially falling through the cracks and having more exposure to crypto than they should. 

“We’re constantly paranoid about this,” Hsu said. 

(Updates with FTX’s impact on banking sector in eighth paragraph and video.)

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