A US Stablecoin Yield Ban Would Push Others to Fill the Void

The stablecoin yield ban debate in the US isn't just a domestic regulatory spat — according to Takatoshi Shibayama, Asia-Pacific lead at hardware wallet maker Ledger, it's a global opportunity waiting to be claimed by whoever moves first.

What Is the US Stablecoin Yield Ban?

The US stablecoin bill being drafted in the Senate was supposed to bring clarity to how market regulators police crypto. Instead, it's now ground to a halt — and the reason is a provision backed by banking lobbyists that would block third-party platforms from passing stablecoin yields to users.

Crypto lobbyists have pushed back hard. But the stablecoin yield ban provision remains in play, and Shibayama said — bluntly — that if it passes, the US won't be killing stablecoin yields. It'll be handing that business to someone else.

Other Countries Are Already Positioning

Shibayama pointed to Australia as one example — stablecoin issuers there have already received a regulatory carve-out. But even with that breathing room, most stablecoins operating outside the US are still not passing yields or rewards to their user base. Why? To protect banks' interests, he said.

If the US formalizes the ban, Shibayama told reporters, it 'definitely opens up a conversation' between institutions, stablecoin issuers, and overseas regulators about how to respond.

If that were to change in the US, then I think it definitely opens up a lot of conversation between the stablecoin issuers and the regulators to allow yields or rewards to be passed through to their user base.

Asia's Bigger Shift: Tokenization Over Crypto

There's a larger story buried underneath the yield debate, and Ledger's Shibayama was candid about it. Since last year, he said, Asia's institutional money has quietly decoupled crypto — as in actual Bitcoin and Ethereum — from blockchain technology more broadly.

Institutions aren't asking: can we get exposure to BTC? They're asking: can we tokenize our financial products? Can we issue our own stablecoins? DeFi and staking, Shibayama said, are mostly off the table for institutional players at this point — 'carefully selected' out of the conversation.

What Does This Mean for Stablecoin Holders?

Asset managers are a different case. Shibayama said they're still actively exploring crypto products — partly to diversify client offerings, partly because regulations around them aren't as strict as they are for banks and custodians. That gap is a real opportunity, and it's drawing serious attention.

On custody specifically, the picture is shifting too. Asset managers are 'becoming a lot more selective' about their custody providers, Shibayama said — they want regulated custodians, they just won't always wait for regulations to force the issue.

The banking lobby wrote a provision specifically to stop stablecoin yields. Think about what that tells you — if yields weren't a threat to banks, they wouldn't be worth banning.