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The Senate just moved the goalposts
Sen. Thom Tillis is basically telling the banking lobby: we heard you, and we’re not changing course. On Monday, he defended the bipartisan stablecoin-yield compromise in the Clarity Act, calling it a “substantially improved, consensus-based product” after bank groups blasted the draft for not doing enough to protect deposits.
The core fight is pretty simple, even if the policy language reads like it was written by a committee in a windowless room: banks don’t want stablecoin rewards to look like interest on deposits, because that could nudge money out of checking accounts and into crypto products. Tillis says the revised text addresses that concern while still letting crypto firms offer other kinds of rewards.
Why Coinbase is smiling
For Coinbase, this is the kind of regulatory weather report that can actually matter. The company had pulled support for the legislation earlier this year, but now it’s backing the bill’s movement again — a classic Washington pivot where yesterday’s headache becomes today’s “progress.”
That’s not the same thing as a clean win. The banking lobby still isn’t thrilled, and JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo were both in the mix as critics or comment targets. But the direction of travel matters:
- Stablecoin rewards can’t be “economically or functionally equivalent” to deposit interest
- Regulators would be pushed to write a new stablecoin rulebook
- A disclosure regime and permissible reward list are part of the package
Big picture: crypto just got a sturdier seat at the table
This isn’t a moonshot headline. It’s more like the plumbing under the crypto house getting less leaky. If the Clarity Act keeps advancing, Coinbase could end up with a clearer path for stablecoin-related products, while banks keep lobbying to make sure their deposits don’t walk out the door wearing a blockchain disguise.
Big picture: in Washington, “compromise” usually means everyone is annoyed — which, oddly enough, is often how real policy gets made.