CoinDesk
Banking lobby pressure is threatening to kill the CLARITY Act before a full Senate vote, and the biggest losers aren't the crypto firms — they're the 68.5 million American adults who already own digital assets. Alex Tapscott of CMCC Global argues the average consumer is getting lost in the political horse-trading between banks and fintech platforms.
Why it matters
The stakes are concrete. Americans paid $5.8 billion in overdraft fees in 2023, the average savings rate sits at just 0.38%, and stablecoins offer a direct alternative: digital dollars that move as cheaply as a WhatsApp message, with lower remittance costs and real-time payments. A bipartisan compromise brokered by Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks already addressed banks' core demands — stablecoin platforms can't offer interest-bearing accounts — yet banking groups are now pushing to eliminate consumer rewards entirely. Meanwhile, 88% of global crypto trading volume runs on non-U.S. exchanges and foreign-issued stablecoins account for 75% of stablecoin volume, a share that will only grow if Congress stalls.
Market impact
Separately, Aisha Hunt makes the case that crypto's next trillion dollars comes not from replacing Wall Street but from upgrading it. The January 2026 exemptive application by F/m Investments to tokenize shares of TBIL — the U.S. Treasury 3-Month Bill ETF — is a live test of whether capital markets modernization happens inside the regulatory perimeter. Citi projects tokenized securities reach $5.5 trillion by 2030, with stablecoins alone driving demand for up to $1 trillion in on-chain Treasuries. If CLARITY passes, that buildout accelerates on U.S. rails. If it stalls, the infrastructure gets built elsewhere.
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