One period, the historical one, existed up until Tuesday (March 3). During this period, access to the Federal Reserve’s core payment systems was available only to banks and credit unions.

On Wednesday (March 4), a new period started with the announcement that Kraken Financial, the Wyoming-chartered bank of the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, was granted a Federal Reserve master account by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

A crypto firm is now part of the same settlement architecture used by traditional banks to clear payments across the U.S. economy for the first time in history. That means Kraken can now move dollars through systems such as Fedwire…