JPMorgan · CLARITY Act · Donald Trump · CoinDesk
The stablecoin yield clash that won't go away has banks, crypto battling over tradition
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You earn a small amount of interest when you let banks hang onto your money, and bankers contend that letting crypto platforms pay you more for holding stablecoins would throw the U.S. economy into danger.
Key facts
- Despite the rapid rise in stablecoin market cap to more than $300 billion, deposits are still flowing into the banks, jumping by nearly $400 billion in the most recently reported quarter, marking
- The first quarter of 2026 showed an industrywide profit at a record $80.5 billion, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp
- The best stablecoin yield rates at exchanges such as Kraken and Gemini are at 3.75% and above for participants of certain programs, and it's at about 3.5% at the biggest U.S. exchange, Coinbase
- Simply put, this matter has already been dealt with," said Rashan Colbert, director of U.S. policy at the Crypto Council for Innovation
Summary
The crypto industry thought it left the debate settled over whether it would be allowed to offer rewards to people using stablecoins, but banking lobbyists came back to undermine an earlier compromise effort, leaving the Clarity Act on shaky ground. The question at the heart of the banks’ argument, that depositors will run to stablecoins if they compete with banks’ deposit-account interest, has some glaring weaknesses, according to crypto lobbyists. A CoinDesk analysis shows the banks are giving far less in interest than they once did, aren’t yet losing depositors and the lending they tout is an increasingly smaller part of their profitable business model. That argument may have contributed to fatally derailing the Senate's Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.