I’ve always thought of crypto as an unlikely addition to mainstream finance, like mustard on spaghetti. That’s because the financial world has been positively withering toward crypto. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, promised in 2017 to fire any trader who dabbled in Bitcoin, and other major banks took a similarly dim view.

So I perked up over the past few weeks when some of the biggest names in banking suddenly began to compliment crypto. I initially assumed they were just genuflecting to Washington: The Trump family loves crypto; the president has made about $7 billion from a coin that bears his name; his sons run a crypto company.

But my reporting shows something more complicated. Wall Street’s crypto plans aren’t just about politics. They offer a new way to profit — one in which banks can make more money by exposing their clients to more risk while facing less oversight. Some changes may threaten the very backbone of the banking system: your personal checking account.

Crypto crash course

Cryptocurrencies are digital money not issued by any particular government. Unlike paper currencies, whose value can be at least partly controlled by central bank interventions (think: printing more money), the price of crypto is set by supply and demand. Usually, the more people who want it, the more the price goes up, and vice versa.

That might be ideal for speculators who want to bet on crypto price swings, but it’s a huge drag for anyone who wants to use cryptocurrency to buy stuff. It creates uncertainty about whether a transaction today will cost the same tomorrow.

As a result, more people have turned in recent years to a form of cryptocurrency called a stablecoin. Unlike Bitcoin, stablecoins have a fixed value and a price that doesn’t swing up or down. Those being developed now are pegged to the U.S. dollar.