The current impasse over stablecoin yields in the U.S. Senate’s crypto market structure bill is now in writing, and the crypto side is holding the line on needing some forms of rewards for stablecoin users.
A White House meeting between Wall Street bankers and crypto executives hit a wall this week, despite officials in President Donald Trump’s administration urging the sides to find a compromise. The banks held their line that no stablecoin yield or reward is acceptable, arguing that such yields threaten the depository activity at the heart of the U.S. banking system, explaining their position in a one-page paper entitled “Yield and Interest Prohibition Principles.”
The Digital Chamber has now penned its own set of principles and began circulating it on Friday, defending the need for the section in the Senate Banking Committee’s draft bill that outlines a range of situations in which rewards could be acceptable. The latest document, obtained by CoinDesk, also says that the bankers’ request for a two-year study on stablecoins’ effect on deposits is acceptable, as long as it doesn’t come with an automatic regulatory rulemaking in response.
“We want to make the case known for policymakers that we do think this is a compromise,” said Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone, in an interview on Friday. With this document, the industry group is putting in writing that it’s willing to give up ground on anything that looks like an interest payment for static holdings of stablecoins, which would most closely resemble a bank savings account.
While the crypto sector has been pursuing stablecoin products allowed under last year’s Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, the bankers are trying to dial back that law with edits included in this pending Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. But the GENIUS Act represents the current law of the land, so Carbone suggested that his industry’s willingness to scrap rewards on stablecoin holdings is a significant concession, and the crypto companies should still be able to offer rewards when customers engage in transactions and other activity. Bankers should return to the table to talk again, he said.
“if they don’t negotiate, then the status quo is that just rewards continue as-is,” said Carbone, who suggested that his group’s wide membership — which includes banking members — can put it closer to the middle of the discussion. “If they do nothing and they continue to say, ‘We just want a blanket prohibition,’ this goes nowhere.”
He hopes the Digital Chamber’s new position paper can reset the negotiations that have halted progress on the legislation since an 11th-hour disagreement derailed a hearing on the bill in the banking panel a month ago.
“Hopefully we can be the voice or the middle man who helps drive this conversation once again, because we are the one trade that represents both sides,” Carbone said, though his group hadn’t been among those negotiating in the White House at the most recent meeting.
The Digital Chamber’s principles on Friday highlighted two particular reward scenarios it wanted protected – those tied to providing liquidity and those fostering ecosystem participation. The group argued those two provisions of the draft bill’s Section 404 are especially important in decentralized finance (DeFi).
The White House is said to have called for a compromise by the end of this month. So far, the bank side hasn’t seemed to budge in repeated meetings, though Trump crypto adviser Patrick Witt said in a Friday interview with Yahoo Finance that another gathering may be scheduled for next week.
“We’re working hard to address the issues that were raised,” Witt told Yahoo Finance, saying he’s encouraged both sides to bend on the details.
“It’s unfortunate that this has become such a big issue,” he said, because the Clarity Act isn’t really about stablecoins, which was more appropriately the business of the already-passed GENIUS Act. “Let’s use a scalpel here to address this narrow issue of idle yield,” he added.
The Senate Agriculture Committee has already passed its own version of the Clarity Act, which focused on the commodities side of the ledger, while the Senate Banking Committee’s version is more about securities. If the banking panel follows its agriculture counterparts, it’ll advance the bill along partisan lines. But if a final bill is to eventually be approved in the entire Senate, it’ll need a lot of Democratic support to clear the chamber’s 60-vote margin.