Crypto and Banks Still Fighting Over Senate Stablecoin Yield Bill

Senator Thom Tillis and the stablecoin yield standoff are back in the headlines, and this time neither the banks nor the crypto industry seems happy about the proposed fix. Tillis told reporters on Monday he plans to release a draft agreement this week that aims to resolve the ongoing fight over whether third parties, including crypto exchanges, should be allowed to offer yield payments on stablecoins, a dispute that has kept the Senate's broader crypto market structure bill locked in limbo.

Why Is the Senate Stablecoin Bill Still Stuck?

The Senate crypto market structure bill, often called the CLARITY Act, was supposed to be the big bipartisan win that brought regulatory certainty to digital assets. The House passed it back in July. Since then, it has gone nowhere, held hostage by a fight that sounds almost mundane on paper but carries enormous commercial stakes: who gets to offer yield on stablecoins.

Banks want that provision dead. Their argument is that if customers can earn interest by parking money in stablecoins on a crypto exchange, they will pull deposits from traditional savings accounts. That is what the bank lobby calls deposit flight, and they are not being subtle about treating it as an existential threat. Crypto platforms, on the other hand, generate real revenue from stablecoin yields, and banning third-party yield payments would gut a significant piece of their business model.

The gap between those two positions has not closed despite three separate White House-mediated sessions. Tillis, who has been trying to broker a deal, acknowledged the resistance from both camps after sharing an early version of the draft with banking and crypto representatives earlier this month. The feedback was not warm.

"I think that people are apprehensive because they haven't seen the full text," Tillis said. "Directionally, it has been instructed by what we consider to be the legitimate issues that we have around deposit flight when we're talking about yield."

Tillis Signals Progress but Admits Work Remains

According to Unchained Crypto's reporting on Tillis's stablecoin yield draft, the senator is targeting a late April markup session for the CLARITY Act, which gives him almost no runway. A markup is the committee-level stage where legislators formally debate and amend a bill before it advances, and you cannot get there without buy-in from the major stakeholders. Right now, that buy-in is missing.

Three people with knowledge of the earlier draft review told Politico the banks pushed back. Crypto groups reportedly have concerns too, though the details of their specific objections have not been made fully public. Tillis did not deny the friction.

"That's why we need to get down to a mark that we're negotiating," he said, adding that the group had "made progress" on anti-evasion provisions but was "still working on" the enforcement language. That last part matters. Anti-evasion rules are meant to prevent entities from routing around any yield ban, and the fact that enforcement language is still unresolved suggests the deal is less finished than the timeline implies.

Tillis said he remains open to making changes and is not treating the current draft as final. The plan is to put the full text out publicly this week so stakeholders can engage with something concrete rather than speculating about a document they have only partially seen. Whether that transparency speeds things up or just gives critics more to argue about is the real question.

If we've still got a disagreement from either banking or crypto, and there's some concern out of crypto, too, then we're going to get the people in the room and call balls and strikes on the final pieces and see if we can get a mark done.

A Fourth Meeting Could Be Coming

Three White House meetings have not produced a deal. Tillis floated the possibility of a fourth. That is not a small thing, as the White House does not typically insert itself this directly into legislative negotiations over sector-specific financial rules. The Trump administration has made clear it wants crypto legislation passed, and the fact that it has mediated three rounds already signals how much political pressure is riding on getting the CLARITY Act moving.

For crypto exchanges, the stablecoin yields dispute is not an abstract policy debate. Yield products attract user deposits and generate fee income. A hard ban on third-party yield payments would fundamentally change what a crypto platform can offer. On the banking side, the concern is just as real. If a Coinbase stablecoin account pays 4% and a Chase savings account pays 0.5%, the money moves. That math is simple.

The crypto industry has been pushing hard for market structure legislation under the Trump administration, and the stablecoin yield provision is threatening to sink something the sector has wanted for years. That is the part that stings. The bill itself is broadly favorable to crypto, and the entire thing is stalling over one provision that banks are drawing a hard line on.

Tillis is betting that publishing the full draft text will change the dynamic. If stakeholders see the complete proposal, the argument goes, some of the apprehension may dissolve. Or they may find more to object to. Either outcome lands before the end of the week.