US Senate Approves Travis Hill’s Bid to Lead the FDIC in a Close Vote

• The U.S. Senate Banking Committee has moved forward with Travis Hill’s nomination to be the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) chairman for life.
• There was a close vote on November 19, 2025, that led to this decision. The senators stuck to their party lines, and the panel voted 13 to 11.

Travis Hill is the FDIC’s acting chairman right now. He began this job in January 2025. He used to work for the Senate Banking Committee as a staff member. People know that Hill supports using cryptocurrency in banks. He changed old rules that made it hard for banks to do business with crypto companies.

For instance, Hill helped Coinbase, a big crypto company, get information from the FDIC. This was about why some banks weren’t interested in new digital money businesses. A lot of people in the crypto world say that regulators were pushing banks away from crypto, which is a problem known as “debanking.”

The vote in the committee was strictly along party lines. Republicans were in favor of Hill, but Democrats were not. Tim Scott, the head of the Senate Banking Committee, said that Hill is “more than qualified” for the job.

But not everyone agrees. Senator Elizabeth Warren said bad things about Hill. She said he didn’t give her enough information about how to fix things at the FDIC. These problems include bad behavior at work that happened when the old leaders were in charge. Senator John Kennedy had held up the nomination because of these workplace problems, but he later changed his mind.

If the full Senate agrees, Hill will be in charge of one of the best bank watchers in the U.S. The FDIC protects people’s money up to $250,000 per account and makes sure banks are safe. Hill’s support for crypto could help banks use digital money more easily. President Donald Trump chose Hill and other pro-crypto leaders to run agencies like the SEC and OCC. This could put an end to some arguments about debanking.