Coinbase accused of a “rug pull” as CLARITY Act stalls over stablecoin yield

Capitol Hill got ghosted: the CLARITY Act markup is postponed

Quick version: a planned Senate markup that was supposed to move a big crypto bill forward got pushed off the calendar, and everyone’s pointing fingers. The CLARITY Act — a proposal meant to tidy up who regulates what in digital assets — hit a pause as negotiators haggle over whether certain stablecoin “rewards” should be treated like bank deposits. The chair said lawmakers are still talking, so the rollout is delayed rather than dead.

That procedural pause turned into a soap-opera moment when a major exchange publicly withdrew support, saying draft changes would effectively kill rewards programs. The exchange’s CEO posted that they’d rather have no bill than a bad bill, and a back-and-forth with a reporter quickly went viral. One side says the White House asked the exchange to broker a deal with banks; the other side says the exchange blindsided the administration. Either way, the markup date slid and the real negotiation moved behind closed doors.

Why “rewards” are suddenly the policy fight that won’t go away

Here’s the meat: banks argue that reward-bearing stablecoins act a lot like deposit products — meaning they could be regulated or limited like savings accounts. Some reward programs have headline-yield numbers that make lawmakers nervous, and that fuels the push to treat those payouts as bank-style interest.

But not all “rewards” are created equal. Programs can be designed at multiple layers — the stablecoin issuer, the exchange, or wallet-level incentives — and those differences matter for consumer expectations and legal definitions. Some platforms use tiered, participation-based boosts rather than a straight interest rate, which supporters say is marketing and loyalty, not deposit-taking.

What gets decided in the text matters in a big way. Narrow drafting choices could ban explicit ‘‘interest,’’ restrict marketing language, or prohibit certain pass-through yield mechanics. Or lawmakers could let some incentive programs survive if they look nothing like insured bank accounts. Possible outcomes range from a tightened rewrite that preserves tiny marketing-style programs, to longer delays if nobody agrees, to the bill advancing without consensus from the biggest exchanges.

There’s also a stacking-of-numbers angle: the stablecoin space is big today and could grow massively over the decade. Estimates vary, but imagine hundreds of billions now and projections into the trillions by 2030 in some scenarios — small regulatory tweaks at that scale could shift profits and customer relationships between banks, exchanges, and payment firms.

For now, the only concrete thing is the postponement. The next real signals will come from updated committee materials or a revised bill text — not from social feeds. So if you’re trading, compliance-checking, or just enjoying the spectacle, keep an eye on official filings. The drama is loud, but the policy sausage gets made in writing, not tweets.