Massive Privacy Act Requires Warrants for Bank Records, Kills Trading Database, and Bans Federal Digital Currency

The “Saving Privacy Act” is a behemoth piece of legislation that essentially hits the reset button on financial privacy, regulatory power, and even what’s considered a taxable transaction. It’s a mix of major wins for privacy advocates and serious gut punches to the government’s ability to track illicit finance and regulate markets.

Warrant Required: Your Bank Records Just Got Harder to Access

If you’ve ever worried about the government rummaging through your bank statements without a good reason, Title I and II are for you. This bill significantly tightens the rules for accessing your financial records under the Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978. Moving forward, a government agency generally can’t get copies of your records from a bank unless they have a search warrant (SEC. 101). This wipes out many existing exceptions that allowed agencies to access records under specific, less-stringent conditions. The intent is clear: Congress wants to create a statutory right that protects the expectation of privacy in your financial life (SEC. 201).

However, this tightening comes with a major trade-off. The bill strips out huge swaths of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), repealing sections that mandated specific recordkeeping and reporting requirements for financial institutions (SEC. 101). While this reduces compliance costs for banks, it creates massive gaps in the infrastructure that law enforcement currently uses to track money laundering and terrorist financing. For example, if you’re a compliance officer, the rules you used to follow for suspicious activity reporting are now largely gone, which could make it harder for authorities to spot the bad actors, even if your personal privacy is better protected.

The $20,000 Rule: Tax Reporting for Online Sales Gets a Break

Remember that new rule where payment apps like Venmo or PayPal had to send you and the IRS a 1099-K form if you did just $600 in business sales? That caused a massive headache for people selling used furniture or flipping items part-time. Title VII of this bill rolls that back. The new threshold for third-party payment processors to report your transactions to the IRS is now $20,000 AND 200 separate transactions (SEC. 701). This is a huge relief for small-scale sellers and side hustlers who were worried about getting hit with complex tax paperwork over a few hundred bucks.

No Digital Dollar and Free Reign for Crypto Users

Title IV and Title VIII deliver a one-two punch to the future of digital currency regulation. First, the bill explicitly bans the Federal Reserve from issuing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) directly to individuals or holding it on its balance sheet (SEC. 401). This stops any potential move toward a government-controlled digital dollar, which many critics feared would allow for unprecedented surveillance of transactions.

Second, the “Keep Your Coins Act” (Title VIII) prohibits any federal agency from restricting a “covered user” from using convertible virtual currency (like Bitcoin or Ethereum) to buy goods or services for personal use (SEC. 802). Crucially, it also protects your right to use a self-hosted wallet—meaning the government can’t force you to use a regulated, centralized exchange just to move your own digital money around. This is a significant win for crypto enthusiasts who prioritize decentralization and personal control over their assets.

The Regulatory Veto: Congress Takes the Wheel

Perhaps the most significant shift in power comes from Title V, which implements a version of the REINS Act (SEC. 501). This fundamentally changes how federal agencies can enact new rules, especially those with a large economic footprint. If an agency wants to issue a “major rule”—one with an economic impact of $100 million or more—that rule cannot take effect unless Congress passes a specific joint resolution of approval (SEC. 502). If Congress doesn't approve it within 70 days, the rule is dead.

This means that if the EPA or OSHA tries to pass a new regulation that affects a large industry—say, a new safety standard for construction or a new emissions rule for manufacturing—Congress must actively vote to approve it. This shifts power away from the expert agencies and into the hands of legislators, potentially slowing down or outright blocking necessary regulations that are politically unpopular. Furthermore, the bill includes a sunset provision requiring existing eligible rules to be reviewed and approved by Congress within five years, or they automatically expire.

The End of the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT)

In a move that will shake up Wall Street surveillance, Title III mandates the immediate shutdown of the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), the massive database used by the SEC and Self-Regulatory Organizations (SROs) to track virtually every trade in the U.S. markets (SEC. 301). The SEC must terminate the CAT within 30 days and update all related rules within 120 days. The bill also explicitly states that the trade identifiers used in the CAT are not Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

For securities regulators, this removes a critical tool used to spot market manipulation, insider trading, and flash crashes. For traders and firms, it eliminates a centralized data repository that some viewed as an unnecessary privacy risk and a major compliance burden. The bill also requires the entities that ran the CAT to reimburse all fees they collected prior to the law’s enactment.