Crypto World
Banks vs crypto over stablecoin yield
The biggest fight in American finance right now is over a single clause: whether digital dollars can pay their holders interest. Banks say yield-bearing stablecoins would drain trillions in deposits and break the lending machine. Crypto says the banks are defending a monopoly on other people’s money. The CLARITY Act is hostage to the answer, and this week the standoff escalated on every front.
Summary
- A battle over whether stablecoins should pay interest has become the biggest obstacle to advancing the CLARITY Act in the US Senate.
- Banks warn that yield bearing stablecoins could pull trillions of dollars from deposits while the crypto industry argues savers should receive the returns generated by reserve assets.
- As lawmakers remain divided, banks are also preparing for a future with stablecoins by investing in digital dollar infrastructure and settlement networks.
The week of June 29, 2026, was supposed to move the CLARITY Act toward the Senate floor. Instead, Coinbase publicly pulled its support for the bill it had spent two years championing, Senate Banking Committee chairman Tim Scott postponed the markup, and President Trump posted that the banks lobbying against stablecoin yield were threatening and undermining his own signature crypto law. The proximate cause of all three events was the same unresolved question: can a stablecoin pay interest?
The question sounds technical. It is not. It is a fight over roughly $6 trillion, which is the amount of deposit money that Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan has warned could migrate out of the banking system if digital dollars are allowed to pass their reserve earnings to holders. Behind the number sits the basic architecture of American credit: banks fund loans with deposits that pay savers little, and anything that gives savers a better default option attacks the cheapest funding source in finance.
Both sides understand the stakes with total clarity, which is why neither will yield. The banks have the oldest lobby in Washington and a century of regulatory capture to draw on. Crypto has the GENIUS Act already signed, a president publicly on its side, and products that customers demonstrably want. Between them sits a Congress trying to pass a market structure bill that both industries claim to support and each is willing to kill over this clause.
This is the anatomy of the standoff: where the yield actually comes from, what each side’s studies really say, how the fight broke into the open at Davos, why the CLARITY Act is stalled, and what the banks are quietly building in case they lose.
Where stablecoin yield comes from
A dollar stablecoin is a bearer claim on a reserve. The issuer takes a customer dollar, parks it in Treasury bills and repo and cash equivalents, and gives back a token redeemable at par. At 2026 short-term rates, that reserve portfolio throws off meaningful income: roughly four cents per year on every dollar, paid by the United States government to the issuer.
Under the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin framework signed in 2025, issuers keep that income. The law prohibits payment stablecoins from paying interest or yield to holders, a clause the banking lobby fought for and won. The result is one of the stranger economic arrangements in modern finance: tens of millions of stablecoin holders collectively finance a float measured in hundreds of billions of dollars, and the entire risk-free return on that float accrues to issuers and their distribution partners.
Tether’s profits, Circle’s revenue-sharing arrangement with Coinbase, and the business case for every new entrant described in the consortium stablecoin model behind Open USD all rest on that captured spread.
Crypto’s position is that the arrangement is indefensible on its own terms. If the token holder supplies the dollar, the token holder should be able to receive the yield, the same way a money market fund passes through its portfolio income. Exchanges already approximate this with rewards programs that pay users for holding certain stablecoins, a workaround the banks call interest by another name and want closed.
The banks’ position is that the arrangement is the only thing standing between the deposit system and a slow-motion run. A stablecoin that pays four percent, holds only Treasuries, settles instantly, and lives in a phone app is not a payment instrument, in their telling. It is a narrow bank, the exact institution American regulators have refused to charter for a century, because a narrow bank collects deposits and funds nothing.
Both descriptions are accurate. That is what makes the fight so hard to resolve. A product can be, simultaneously, a long-overdue transfer of interest income to the people who supply the money and a structural threat to the funding model of every lender in the country. The legislative machinery now stuck in the Senate exists precisely because Congress must pick which description governs, and there is no compromise text that makes both true halves false.
The dueling studies: $6.6 trillion or $2.1 billion
In early 2026 the American Bankers Association put a number on the threat. Its analysis warned that permitting interest-bearing stablecoins could trigger as much as $6.6 trillion in deposit flight from the banking system, a figure that would represent a structural repricing of bank funding. Moynihan carried the message personally, telling audiences that 30 to 35 percent of transactional deposits could leave banks if yield-bearing digital dollars became legal, and putting the Bank of America estimate in the $6 trillion range.
The mechanism behind the number is credit contraction. Deposits fund loans. A dollar that leaves a checking account for a stablecoin backed by T-bills stops funding a mortgage or a small business line and starts funding the federal government. Multiply by trillions and the banks’ model produces higher loan rates, reduced credit availability, and concentrated stress on community banks whose entire funding base is retail deposits. The ABA’s framing is not that banks would earn less, though they would; it is that the economy would lend less.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers looked at the same question and produced a number three orders of magnitude smaller. Its assessment put plausible deposit displacement in the low billions, around $2.1 billion in the scenario most cited, arguing that stablecoin demand comes overwhelmingly from crypto trading, cross-border flows, and dollar demand abroad, none of which is money sitting in a Kansas checking account today. In the CEA’s telling, the banks are counting every deposit that could theoretically move as a deposit that would move, ignoring deposit insurance, banking relationships, and the fact that money market funds have offered better rates than checking accounts for fifty years without ending bank lending.
The three-orders-of-magnitude gap is not really an empirical dispute. The two studies answer different questions. The ABA models the ceiling of a mature, frictionless, fully legal yield-bearing stablecoin market; the CEA models the floor of the current one. The honest answer, that displacement would start small and compound as the products improved, satisfies neither side, because the banks need the threat to be immediate and crypto needs it to be imaginary.
Davos, and the fight goes personal
The clearest public glimpse of how raw the conflict has become came at Davos in January, in an exchange between the two most powerful executives on either side.
JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon, discussing stablecoin yield with Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong on a panel, dismissed Armstrong’s framing of deposit competition with a phrase that escaped the room within minutes: he told him he was full of s—, a vulgarity from the most measured banker of his generation that did more to reveal the temperature of the fight than any comment letter.
Armstrong’s argument, the one that drew the response, is the consumer-surplus case. American savers hold trillions in accounts paying a fraction of a percent while banks earn multiples of that on the float. Stablecoin yield, in his telling, is simply technology forcing banks to pay depositors something closer to the market rate for their money, and the deposit-flight studies are incumbents pricing their own margin as a systemic necessity. Coinbase has the most direct commercial stake of anyone in the room: its revenue share on USDC reserves is one of its largest income lines, and a world of legal yield pass-through is a world where its stablecoin business attacks bank deposits head-on.
Dimon’s counter is that payments and banking are different businesses with different risk, and that crypto wants banking economics without banking obligations: no lending mandate, no Community Reinvestment Act, no branch network, no discount window responsibilities, just the float. JPMorgan has hedged its own position, running deposit tokens and blockchain settlement internally while its chief executive argues against the retail version, a posture crypto reads as monopoly defense and banks read as prudence.
Then the President entered. In a late June post, Trump accused the banks of threatening and undermining the GENIUS Act, his own signed legislation, by lobbying to extend the yield ban and hobble stablecoin competition. A Republican president publicly siding against the banking lobby on a financial regulation fight is a genuinely new configuration in Washington, and it reshuffled assumptions on both sides about who holds the political high ground.
How the yield clause took CLARITY hostage
The CLARITY Act is a market structure bill. It assigns jurisdiction between the SEC and CFTC, defines when a digital asset is a security or a commodity, and creates the registration framework the industry has demanded for a decade. It is not, on its face, a stablecoin bill; the complete stablecoin framework already passed in GENIUS. But Washington does not respect bill boundaries, and the yield war has annexed it.
The banking lobby’s ask is straightforward: use CLARITY to close the loopholes GENIUS left open. That means extending the interest prohibition from issuers to exchanges and affiliates, killing the rewards programs that pay stablecoin holders today, and blocking any structure that passes reserve income to users. Bank trade groups have made support conditional on those provisions, and enough senators from both parties bank with them, figuratively and literally, to make the demand real.
Crypto’s response arrived the last week of June, when Coinbase announced it could no longer support CLARITY in its current trajectory, precisely because the yield restrictions being negotiated into it would, in the company’s view, entrench the ban permanently. The industry’s most important lobbying force turning against the industry’s most important bill was the loudest possible signal that the yield clause now outweighs the rest of the legislation for the companies whose business models depend on it.
Chairman Scott’s postponement of the markup followed within days. The delay was procedural on its face and structural in substance: there is no current text that both the banks and the crypto industry will accept, and members have little appetite to vote on a bill that one of the two richest lobbies in the country has promised to remember.
The market structure everyone claims to want is now collateral in a fight over a clause most voters have never heard of.
The political calendar sharpens everything. The window before the midterm campaign consumes Congress is measured in weeks, and both lobbies know that a bill that slips past the summer likely slips past the election, into a Congress nobody can predict.
The Regulation Q rhyme
The yield war has a nearly perfect historical precedent, and both sides quote it selectively.
From 1933 until its final repeal in 2011, Regulation Q capped or prohibited the interest American banks could pay on various deposits, a Depression-era rule justified in language strikingly close to today’s: unrestrained competition for deposits would push banks into risky lending and destabilize the system. For four decades the cap was mostly invisible, because market rates sat near the ceiling. Then came the inflation of the 1970s. Market rates ran far above what banks were legally allowed to pay, and savers found themselves holding accounts that lost purchasing power by regulatory design.
The market’s answer was the money market mutual fund, an instrument that did precisely what yield-bearing stablecoins propose to do now: pool customer cash, buy short-term government paper, and pass the interest through. Money funds grew from nothing in 1971 to hundreds of billions by the early 1980s, deposit flight became a named phenomenon, disintermediation, and the banking industry warned in congressional testimony that the funds would destroy community banking and starve the economy of credit. Congress ultimately responded not by banning money funds but by deregulating deposits, phasing out the caps and letting banks compete for money at market rates.
Both sides of the 2026 fight live inside this story. Crypto cites it as proof that yield restrictions always fall, that savers eventually get paid, and that the catastrophic credit predictions never arrived; the banking system that emerged from deregulation was different, and more expensive to fund, but intact. The banks cite the sequel: the savings and loan industry, built entirely on cheap capped deposits, could not survive paying market rates for money, and its collapse consumed a decade and roughly $124 billion of public funds. Deposit competition did not end banking, but it did end the banks whose models required the subsidy.
The rhyme suggests the real question is not whether stablecoin yield eventually becomes legal in some form; the historical base rate says restrictions on paying savers erode. The question is which institutions are the savings and loans of this cycle, funded so completely by the interest-free float that they cannot survive its repricing, and whether they are banks, or the stablecoin issuers whose entire margin is the yield they currently keep.
The banks’ quiet hedge
While the trade associations fight the public war, the banks themselves are behaving like institutions that expect to lose it.
Barclays made the most explicit move, taking a stake in Ubyx, the stablecoin clearing network built to let banks and fintechs redeem stablecoins at par across issuers, the plumbing a bank needs on the day it decides to issue or distribute digital dollars itself. It was the first direct stablecoin infrastructure investment by a major bank since the yield fight broke into the open, and it was not framed as an experiment. Bank executives have begun saying the quiet part in public: if Congress makes yield-bearing digital dollars legal, the banks will go into that business, at scale, the day the ink dries.
The logic is the same one that has played out in every disruption cycle in finance. Banks did not want money market funds in 1975 or online brokerages in 1995, and once each became inevitable, banks became the largest providers of both. A legal yield-bearing stablecoin issued by a money center bank, with deposit-adjacent branding, existing customer relationships, and a balance sheet behind it, is a formidable product, and arguably a more dangerous one to Tether and Circle than to the banks themselves. Consortium efforts like Open USD, whose members built a shared issuance model precisely so no single firm owns the float, exist in part because everyone can see the banks coming.
The infrastructure is converging from the other direction too. Payment-first blockchains designed for regulated issuers, the category examined in the rise of dedicated stablechains, are being built with bank compliance requirements as first-order design constraints, not afterthoughts. The technical gap between a bank deposit and a stablecoin narrows every quarter; the yield clause is the last load-bearing wall between the two products.
That is the tell in this fight. Institutions do not invest in the rails of a product category they expect to strangle. The banks are lobbying to delay the future and provisioning to own it.
What each side gets wrong
The banks’ deposit-flight case has a real weakness at its center: it treats the current deposit franchise as an entitlement. The spread between what banks earn on customer money and what they pay for it is not a law of nature; it is a price maintained by friction, and every prior technology that reduced the friction, from money funds to high-yield online savings, transferred some of that spread to savers without collapsing credit. The system adapted, banks paid more for funding, lending got marginally more expensive, and the economy survived. Framing the next step in that fifty-year process as a $6.6 trillion cliff requires assuming, without much evidence, that this time adaptation is impossible.
Crypto’s consumer-surplus case has a mirror-image weakness: it waves away the run problem. Bank deposits are sticky in a crisis partly because they are insured and partly because moving them is slow. A yield-bearing stablecoin is uninsured and moves at the speed of a tap. In a March 2023-style panic, the same properties that make stablecoins efficient make them the fastest exit door in the system, and a world where a meaningful share of transactional money can flee to tokenized T-bills in an afternoon is a world with a new, untested amplifier under every banking stress. The honest crypto answer is that this risk is manageable with reserve rules and redemption gates; the marketing answer, that it does not exist, is the one that gets said out loud.
There is also a shared blind spot. Both sides model the fight as domestic, and the stablecoin market is not. The majority of dollar stablecoin demand originates outside the United States, from savers and businesses in weak-currency economies for whom the yield question is secondary to the dollar itself. Whatever Congress decides about interest, the offshore float will keep growing, and the deposits it drains first are not in Kansas; they are in Buenos Aires and Lagos and Istanbul. The American fight over yield is, in part, a fight over who gets to monetize a global phenomenon neither side created.
The endgame scenarios
Three broad resolutions are visible from here, and each has a coalition behind it.
The first is the status quo hardened: CLARITY passes with the extended yield ban, rewards programs die, and issuers keep the float. This is the banks’ victory condition. Its weakness is that it is probably temporary, an attempt to legislate against a spread that technology keeps making easier to deliver, enforced against an industry with a sitting president publicly on its side. Prohibitions that fight both technology and the White House have a poor record.
The second is the pass-through world: yield becomes legal, the banks execute their hedge, and within a few years the largest stablecoin issuers in America are the same institutions that spent 2026 warning about them. Deposits reprice, weaker banks consolidate, and the credit system adjusts to more expensive funding, the way it adjusted to money market funds. This is where the investment behavior of the banks themselves suggests the smart money already sits.
The third is stalemate: CLARITY dies this Congress, GENIUS remains the only law, and the yield question migrates to regulators and courts, fought product by product through rewards programs, tokenized money funds, and offshore issuers that Congress never manages to reach. This is the default outcome if the next few weeks produce no text, and default outcomes in a midterm year are heavy favorites.
The watch list for the next few weeks is short and concrete. First, whether Scott reschedules the markup before the August recess, because a markup date means a text exists that leadership believes can survive both lobbies, and no date means the third scenario is winning. Second, the behavior of the pro-crypto Senate bloc, which has to decide whether a CLARITY with a hardened yield ban is worth passing over the industry’s objection, or whether half the coalition walks. Third, the regulatory perimeter fights already underway: how the Treasury implements the GENIUS provisions on affiliates, whether the rewards programs survive their first supervisory challenges, and how aggressively tokenized money market funds, which pay yield legally because they are securities, get marketed as the stablecoin alternative the ban cannot touch. Every one of those is a proxy battle in the same war, and each can move independent of Congress.
It is also worth naming the quiet incentive nobody in the fight advertises: the federal government is a beneficiary of the stablecoin boom regardless of who keeps the yield, because every reserve dollar is demand for Treasury bills at the exact moment deficits need buyers. A Washington that quietly likes the float’s growth has reasons to resolve the fight in whatever way grows it fastest, and that logic, unspoken, may ultimately weigh more than either lobby’s studies.
The $6 trillion number that anchors the fight will keep being quoted whichever path unfolds, and it is worth remembering what it actually is: not a measurement, but a boundary claim, the banks’ estimate of everything they could lose in the world their opponents want. The real number will be discovered the way these numbers always are, one repriced deposit at a time. The only certainty is the direction. Money has spent fifty years migrating toward whoever pays for it, and no clause has ever held that line forever.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile and you can lose your entire investment. Always do your own research. Information current as of July 6, 2026.
Bitcoin hovered around the low-$63,000s on Tuesday after briefly touching $64,660—its highest level in about two weeks—while US stock indexes slid in early trading. Equity weakness was led by semiconductor names, and the broader move again highlighted how tightly crypto traders are tracking traditional markets during risk-off sessions.
Despite the dip, BTC’s pullback remained orderly as US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) continued to post net inflows for a second day, according to data compiled by Farside Investors. That inflow backdrop helped keep a clear downside break from fully materializing as traders debated whether recent price action was only a correction or the start of a more durable shift.
Key takeaways
- BTC pulled back from a $64,660 peak (highest since June 22) as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 fell after the Wall Street open.
- Semiconductor stocks led the equity decline, including Micron Technologies, which was down more than 9% at the time of writing.
- US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows for a second consecutive day, providing a floor for sentiment.
- Traders said BTC’s correlation to the Nasdaq has shifted quickly compared with the prior week, changing how BTC is being positioned intraday.
- John Bollinger reiterated that the market is at a “critical point,” pointing to a potential daily “W”-shaped reversal setup.
Bitcoin steadies near $63,000 as stocks slip
TradingView data showed BTC/USD cooling after rising to $64,660, the highest print since June 22. At the same time, market participants watched US equities weaken: the S&P 500 was down about 0.6% and the Nasdaq 100 down around 2.1% during the same window.
Semiconductor weakness intensified the risk mood. Micron Technologies led losses, falling over 9% after highly anticipated earnings late last month (coverage linked by Cointelegraph noted the market attention around those results). That kind of tape matters for crypto not because chip earnings “cause” Bitcoin directly, but because traders often use broader liquidity and index exposure as a proxy for overall risk appetite.
The equity story also carried an index mechanics angle. Tuesday marked the day SpaceX was set to be added to the Nasdaq-100, following its own period of volatility in late June, according to Cointelegraph’s earlier coverage linked in the original report. A faster-than-usual index inclusion—The Kobeissi Letter described SpaceX’s path as the fastest inclusion in the Nasdaq-100’s history in commentary posted to X—can increase near-term positioning and momentum across related exchange-traded products.
ETF inflows and a shifting Nasdaq correlation
While stocks retreated, BTC avoided a sharper breakdown in part because institutional-style demand continued to appear consistent. Fresh inflow data showed US spot Bitcoin ETFs logging a second day of net inflows, as tracked by Farside Investors (see the ETF flow dashboard referenced in the original coverage).
Beyond inflows, some traders focused on the relationship between BTC and the Nasdaq. Trader Daan Crypto Trades reported on X that BTC’s correlation to the Nasdaq had flipped to +0.72 from -0.87 over the span of days the previous week. The implication for day traders is straightforward: when correlation regimes change, strategies built around “hedging” versus “high-beta” equity-like behavior can stop working as expected.
“That’s the difference between trading like a complete hedge/inverse and trading like a high beta tech stock. Right now we’re back to the middle on the 4H timeframe.”
In other words, BTC wasn’t behaving as either a clean hedge or a strict substitute for tech risk—it was in-between, which often makes short-term price action more sensitive to index moves and ETF flow headlines.
Traders split on whether this is a deeper correction
Market commentary remained mixed. Some traders argued that lower-timeframe structure still pointed to additional downside before any larger trend improvement. Cointelegraph-linked coverage mentioned Exitpump as cautious on low time frames, describing an expectation for a “rounding topping structure” and more downside thereafter.
Others framed it as a matter of history repeating through a broader S&P correction. Trader Killa suggested that a “true $BTC bottom” could align with the next correction in the S&P 500, adding that it would be worth checking whether past cycles—citing 2015, 2018, and 2022—repeat in a comparable manner. This is not a prediction of exact dates, but it reflects a common approach: use major equity drawdowns as a timing reference for when liquidity tends to return to risk assets.
For readers, the practical takeaway is that the market signal is not unanimous. ETF inflows and index correlation shifts can stabilize BTC even if technical charts continue to warn of further chop or pullbacks. The next reliable clue would be whether BTC can hold key intraday levels while equities remain heavy, or whether an ETF-flow tailwind can overpower equity weakness for longer than a single session.
Bollinger points to a “W” reversal at a critical juncture
Alongside the trading-floor debate, long-running technical commentary also resurfaced. John Bollinger, the developer of Bollinger Bands, posted additional bullish nuance on X, again emphasizing that the market appears to be at a decision point.
Cointelegraph’s earlier reporting linked in the original piece described Bollinger’s focus on a “W”-shaped reversal pattern developing on the daily timeframe, with the latest iteration potentially confirming a change in trend. Bollinger said last week that the newest setup could even cancel the existing downtrend—while acknowledging that in chart patterns, confirmation often requires follow-through.
On Monday, Bollinger added: “We are at a critical point,” and laid out the logic of how bullish and bearish formations tend to behave differently depending on the prevailing trend.
“In a bear market bullish setups break and in a bull market bearish setups break. So if this W pattern is successful I would see it as a confirmation of a change in trend.”
That framing matters because it highlights what investors should watch next: not just whether the “W” exists on a chart, but whether the market action after the supposed confirmation level actually holds, especially during equity-driven volatility.
As equities remain sensitive to corporate and index catalysts, and as crypto continues to react to ETF flow developments, the “critical point” Bollinger referenced may end up being less about one perfect pattern and more about whether buyers can defend the reversal attempt through the next round of risk fluctuations.
For the near term, traders should monitor two things closely: whether US spot Bitcoin ETF inflows persist as stocks trend lower, and whether BTC can sustain its reversal structure on daily and four-hour timeframes without another sharp correlation-driven selloff.
Kraken, the cryptocurrency exchange planning to go public in the U.S., is pursuing a full banking license in Europe, with a focus on Lithuania as the jurisdiction to secure it, according to a person familiar with the plans.
If the firm gets the license, Kraken would be the only crypto exchange to have such a designation. It will also tread the same regulatory path as fintech major Revolut, which holds a specialized European banking license issued in 2018 and regulated by the Bank of Lithuania. This allowed Revolut to offer full current accounts, consumer lending, and stock trading across the European Economic Area (EEA).
Kraken declined to comment on the plans. A spokesman for the Bank of Lithuania said the licensing process of financial market participants is confidential.
Other fintech firms holding a banking or specialized bank license in Lithuania include Mano Bank, PayRay, European Merchant Bank (EMBank), AB Fjord Bank, and Saldo Bank.
The move to gain full banking status in Europe is part of a broader effort by Payward, Kraken’s parent company, to obtain additional licenses globally.
“There is no major negative fundamental catalyst that we can see,” Dorman said. “These kinds of big movements are common after SPACs because the entire investor base turns over from fixed-income-oriented SPAC buyers to new, fundamentally driven long-term equity owners.”
SPAC merger tickers are often volatile in their early days of trading. These vehicles raise money first and seek an acquisition later, allowing a private company to reach the public market by merging with the shell. But once the deal closes, the investor base often turns over, with SPAC arbitrage investors and redemption-focused holders giving way to public-equity investors weighing the company’s fundamentals. That transition can create sharp price swings, particularly when the float is limited or the stock had traded up before the merger.
Crypto IPO hangover
Dorman added that poor performance of recent crypto-related stock listings have conditioned investors to be cautious.
“Given how horrible recent crypto IPOs have been — Coinbase (COIN), Bullish (BLSH), Gemini (GEMI), BitGo (BTGO) and Circle (CRCL) — it’s not that surprising,” Dorman said.
Since its February IPO, digital asset service provider and custodian BitGo tumbled 70%. Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by the Winklevoss brothers, is down 85% from its September debut. Bullish, CoinDesk’s owner, has fallen over 70% from its $90 debut price in August 2025, and sits below its $37 IPO price.
Stablecoin competition is increasingly giving way to specialization. Data from Dune’s Digital Asset Brief suggests Tether’s USDt (USDT) and Circle’s USDC are fulfilling different jobs across the crypto economy—less “winner-takes-all,” more complementary roles feeding payments on one side and DeFi and trading infrastructure on the other.
In the first half of 2026, Dune estimates the biggest stablecoin by activity settled about $95 billion in identified commerce payments. The same dataset points to roughly $14 billion for USDC in those commerce payments and puts USDT at about 92% of the $48 billion business-to-business (B2B) payment volume. On Tron, Dune also reports that approximately 93% of USDT’s supply sits in ordinary wallets rather than exchanges, reinforcing its use as a payment and remittance asset.
Key takeaways
- USDT is leading on real-world-style payments: Dune data shows about $95B in identified commerce payments in H1 2026 versus about $14B for USDC.
- USDC is more central to on-chain finance: USDC transfer volume on Base reached roughly $2.6T in June, with about $1.6T on Ethereum.
- Token distribution hints at use cases: On Tron, Dune estimates ~93% of USDT supply is held in non-exchange wallets, consistent with payments rather than trading.
- Regulatory momentum may change how stablecoins scale: The US GENIUS Act created a federal framework for payment stablecoins, while the CLARITY Act could reshape broader market structure affecting issuers and platforms.
USDT’s payment dominance and what the wallet data implies
Dune’s analysis is particularly telling because it doesn’t just measure token transfers—it focuses on “identified commerce payments.” That framing matters: it aims to map stablecoin flows that resemble merchant and transactional activity rather than purely speculative movement.
According to Dune’s Digital Asset Brief, USDT’s share in B2B commerce is especially large. With roughly 92% of the approximately $48 billion B2B payment volume going to the leading stablecoin, USDT appears positioned as the default settlement rail for corporate and cross-party transfers—at least in the portion of commerce activity Dune can identify.
On Tron, Dune’s “where the supply lives” view adds another layer. With about 93% of USDT supply held in ordinary wallets rather than exchange custody, the stablecoin’s on-chain footprint looks less like an instrument primarily circulating between trading venues and more like an asset staying in the hands of payers, merchants, and intermediaries that use it to settle obligations.
USDC’s DeFi and transfer velocity on Base and Ethereum
While USDT’s dataset emphasizes payments, USDC’s role looks more tied to crypto market plumbing—especially decentralized finance and exchange-like activity. Dune reports that USDC on Base processed roughly $2.6 trillion in transfer volume in June, the highest transfer volume of any token-chain pair. On Ethereum, USDC handled another approximately $1.6 trillion.
Velocity also points to broader usage intensity. Dune notes that USDC on Base recorded daily velocity of about 20 times its circulating supply in June. In practical terms, velocity rising far above one suggests frequent movement of the same supply across trading, lending, or routing activities—patterns often associated with on-chain markets rather than simple payment holding.
Put together, these metrics shift the conversation. Instead of asking which stablecoin “wins,” the more useful question may be where each stablecoin fits in the on-chain stack: USDT appearing to concentrate around payments and remittances, while USDC is more deeply embedded in transfer-heavy trading and DeFi ecosystems.
Why the USDT-versus-USDC narrative is losing clarity
Dune’s findings effectively argue that the traditional framing—USDT competing directly with USDC as the default stablecoin—does not capture how stablecoins actually behave across chains and use cases.
One way to see this is through concentration patterns. Dune reports USDT’s supply is split almost evenly between Tron and Ethereum, whereas USDC remains heavily concentrated on Ethereum despite expanding to newer blockchains. That distribution aligns with the performance profile the dataset shows: USDC’s most prominent volume and velocity signals appear tied to Ethereum and Base activity, while USDT’s stronger commerce-payments footprint aligns with Tron’s large role in everyday transfers.
Meanwhile, the stablecoin market remains dominated by both issuers’ assets. Dune tracked more than 200 stablecoin tokens across multiple blockchains and estimates USDT and USDC together account for roughly 83% of the sector’s approximately $315 billion market capitalization. In other words, even if the “competition” is shifting toward specialization, the center of gravity is still concentrated in these two tokens.
US policy moves: GENIUS passed, CLARITY could broaden the ruleset
These data-driven role distinctions are emerging alongside renewed US regulatory momentum. Earlier this year, the US stablecoin sector gained traction following the passage of the GENIUS Act. Signed into law in 2025, GENIUS created the first federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, with the stated goal of enabling banks and other companies to issue US dollar-pegged digital assets. (For background, Cointelegraph previously covered the legislation here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/treasury-genius-act-rule-illicit-finance.)
Lawmakers are now debating the CLARITY Act, which would establish a broader market structure for digital assets by clarifying when crypto assets fall under either the US Securities and Exchange Commission or the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. While the bill does not target stablecoins directly, it could still influence the operating environment for stablecoin issuers, exchanges, and DeFi platforms through how regulators classify and supervise related activity.
CLARITY cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May and may be brought to a full Senate vote before the August recess, although the odds have been changing as lawmakers face time constraints. Cointelegraph reported that Galaxy trimmed its odds of passage to 50% before the break: https://cointelegraph.com/news/galaxy-cuts-2026-clarity-act-odds-50.
Going forward, investors and builders may want to track more than headline stablecoin market share. Dune’s results suggest that chain distribution, wallet versus exchange custody, and transfer velocity are increasingly important signals of real utility. The next question is how regulation—starting with GENIUS and potentially shaped by CLARITY—will affect which stablecoin roles can scale most easily across payments, lending, and trading.
AbbVie logo on modern glass office building with metal columns, South San Francisco, California, Oct. 16, 2025.
Smith Collection | Gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images
Jefferies recommends owning quality, low-stress stocks to ride out the summer as markets become more volatile amid increased concerns tied to investment in artificial intelligence.
AI-related questions range from potential overcapacity, the profits that will result from hyperscalers investing an estimated $700 billion in capital spending and rising costs for tokens, the fees paid to AI models, according to a note from Desh Peramunetilleke, head of quantitative strategy at Jefferies.
As evidence of the popularity of all things AI, the S&P 500 momentum index has outperformed the broader stock market by more than 70% since 2024, close to levels seen during the dot-com run of the 1990s. Before the outbreak of war with Iran, momentum strategies had included materials and defense stocks, but currently AI alone is carrying the ball, “increasing the risk of an unwind on adverse sentiment,” the strategist wrote Monday.
“While we still see the theme as a long-term winner, the above reasons could drive an unwinding of the AI-led momentum,” Peramunetilleke said.
Peramunetilleke and his team recommended a list of what they call high-quality companies with low momentum to ride out any potential AI-led storms.
Jefferies looked for companies with a high quality score, market values of more than $10 billion, solid fundamentals and long-term free cash flow yields above 3%. The group also had to include stocks with limited momentum and attractive valuations selling for less than 20 times expected earnings over the next year.
Here are 10 stocks from Jefferies’ list:
Drugmaker AbbVie scored a top quality score from Jefferies, which sees the company delivering compound annual earnings growth of nearly 28% in 2026-2027, with a free cash flow yield of 5.2%, one of the stronger growth and cash flow combinations on the list.
AbbVie in its first-quarter financial reported $15 billion in worldwide net revenues, driven largely by a $7.3 billion immunology portfolio. Last week, AbbVie strengthened its next-gen immunology pipeline after agreeing to buy Apogee Therapeutics for $10.9 billion, its largest acquisition in more than five years.
Chicago-based AbbVie is set to release second-quarter results on July 31. The stock has climbed 25% in the past three months, 37% in the past year and yield 2.7%, based on FactSet data.
Netflix, with a $320 billion market value and a 3.6% free cash flow yield, also shared a high quality score in Jefferies’ model. The dominant streaming platform forecast second-quarter revenue growth of 13% despite warning that content spending would be weighted in the first half of the year due to the timing of title launches.
The streaming giant’s shares fell 10% in mid-April when second-quarter guidance fell short of Wall Street expectations and it left full-year forecasts unchanged.
Netflix is set to release second-quarter results on July 16. The stock is down 18% in 2026 so far and almost 41% lower over the past 12 months.
Other companies on Jefferies’ quality, low-stress screen include Lowe’s Companies, McDonald’s and American Express.
NEAR's on-chain governance body, House of Stake, passed proposal HSP-027 to eliminate the protocol's developer gas rebate, a change that will send all network gas fees to be burned rather than partly rebated to smart-contract owners. NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin confirmed the outcome Monday,… Read the full story at The Defiant
Tether has taken a $20 million stake in Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin as it pushes further into tokenized financial products and stablecoin-powered payments across Latin America. The investment is intended to back the company’s expansion into tokenized assets, lending and other blockchain-based services throughout the region.
Mercado Bitcoin, originally launched in 2013 as a crypto trading venue, has since broadened into regulated financial offerings. The platform says it now serves more than 4.5 million users and has issued over 2 billion Brazilian reais (about $370 million) in tokenized assets, while operating under nearly a dozen licenses in Brazil and Europe, including a payment institution authorization from Brazil’s central bank.
Key takeaways
- Tether’s $20 million investment targets Mercado Bitcoin’s expansion into tokenized assets, lending and stablecoin payments in Latin America.
- Mercado Bitcoin positions its business model as “onchain” financial infrastructure supported by multiple licenses, including Brazil’s payment institution framework.
- Tether says it is using profits from its stablecoin business (including USDT) to fund strategic investments in blockchain financial services.
- The deal builds on Mercado Bitcoin’s earlier tokenization deployments, including a $20 million private credit rollout on Bitcoin’s Rootstock sidechain.
Tether backs Mercado Bitcoin’s regulated onchain push
The partnership highlights how stablecoin issuers are increasingly funding regulated platforms rather than focusing solely on token supply. Tether Investments’ stated approach is to support companies building blockchain-based financial infrastructure, and Mercado Bitcoin is positioned as one of Latin America’s most developed “regulated onchain” ecosystems—according to Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino.
Ardoino said Mercado Bitcoin has established a comprehensive platform by combining licensing, tokenization capabilities, and integrated financial services. For investors and users, the practical takeaway is that the project is aiming to connect tokenization and payments to mainstream financial rails under oversight, rather than treating blockchain services as purely standalone experiments.
While the statement emphasizes regulatory breadth, the investment also implicitly addresses a core challenge facing tokenized finance: making tokenized products easier to deploy within existing legal and payment frameworks. Mercado Bitcoin’s cited license footprint—spanning Brazil and Europe, and including a Brazilian central bank payment institution license—suggests the company intends to keep expanding within compliance constraints as it adds more stablecoin and tokenized offerings.
Tokenization momentum: from private credit to wider asset services
Mercado Bitcoin’s broader tokenization strategy appears to be accelerating. In February, the platform announced it had deployed more than $20 million in tokenized private credit, describing this as part of its expanding real-world asset (RWA) activity. That deployment was carried out on Bitcoin’s sidechain Rootstock, according to earlier reporting from Cointelegraph: Mercado Bitcoin expands LatAm RWA push.
Against that backdrop, Tether’s new investment can be read as reinforcement of a direction already underway: scaling tokenization use cases beyond early pilots. The company’s most recent plan explicitly includes stablecoin payments and lending—two segments that typically require not only token issuance and custody capabilities, but also reliable payment processing and settlement infrastructure.
Still, the specific operational details of how the $20 million will be allocated within Mercado Bitcoin’s product stack weren’t provided in the information available here. Readers should watch for updates on whether the funding is earmarked for token issuance infrastructure, credit origination/servicing, or specific stablecoin settlement integrations.
Where Tether’s money is coming from
For Tether, the Mercado Bitcoin investment fits a broader pattern of deploying capital through its investment arm. The company issues USDT, which it describes as the largest stablecoin by circulation, with about $184 billion in circulation cited in the underlying material.
In its Q1 2026 results, Tether reported approximately $1.04 billion in net profit and said it is using those earnings for strategic investments. The underlying report also notes ongoing emphasis on reserves; the investment announcement ties directly to this broader capital deployment thesis via Tether’s finance strategy.
Beyond Mercado Bitcoin, Tether’s participation in other initiatives—such as a $134 million funding round for the Stablecoin Development Corporation—has also been framed as part of expanding the “stablecoin economy” and the infrastructure around it. In April, Tether backed that financing round, and later invested in remittance platform LemFi with the aim of supporting USDT settlement for cross-border payments across Africa and Asia.
Tether also outlined plans to work with the Government of Georgia to launch a stablecoin pegged to the Georgian lari under the country’s digital asset framework. Separately, Tether has said it invests in sectors including artificial intelligence, energy, biotechnology and digital media through its investment arm.
Signals for stablecoin adoption and regulated finance in LatAm
The Mercado Bitcoin deal matters because it sits at the intersection of three trends: tokenization of real-world assets, stablecoin payments, and regulatory-driven rollout. Stablecoins can reduce settlement friction, while tokenized credit and other RWAs aim to bring traditional financial products onto blockchain rails. Mercado Bitcoin’s licensing and reported track record are positioned as the bridge between those worlds.
For users in Brazil and across Latin America, the most meaningful question is whether stablecoin payments and lending will become integrated into Mercado Bitcoin’s regulated financial stack in a way that supports scale—especially for remittances, merchant payments, and other high-frequency use cases. For builders and institutional participants, the investment suggests continued demand for compliant infrastructure that can connect tokenized assets to payment systems.
There’s also an important context point: Tether leadership has previously addressed speculation about going public. Paolo Ardoino said the company has no plans to go public, according to a social post linked in the underlying material.
That clarification doesn’t change the Mercado Bitcoin story directly, but it underscores that the investment strategy is being presented as an ongoing part of Tether’s operating approach rather than a short-term funding maneuver tied to corporate restructuring.
Next, the market will likely look for concrete milestones from Mercado Bitcoin: how quickly stablecoin payments and lending roll out under its licensing framework, and whether additional tokenized credit or other RWAs expand beyond the earlier Rootstock-based deployment. The $20 million investment is a clear signal of intent, but execution details will determine how much of Latin America’s tokenized-finance promise turns into sustained, usable products.
Binance added 10 more bStocks tokenized securities as margin collateral, the second expansion in four days. The list includes Alphabet (GOOGLB), Coinbase (COINB), and the triple-leveraged semiconductor token SOXLB.
The push deepens leverage utility for a product whose first month produced $193.3 million in weekly net inflows but also revealed narrow, tech-heavy demand.
Binance bStocks Collateral Push Builds on $193 Million Week
According to the exchange’s announcement, eligible users can post the tokens as collateral under cross margin and unified account modes. Borrowing is not supported, and access is limited to VIP 3 and above users in approved jurisdictions.
The batch also covers DRAMB, a memory-sector ETF token, and arrives four days after 15 additions disclosed on Square. Those included NVIDIA (NVDAB), Tesla (TSLAB), and SpaceX (SPCXB), bringing eligible bStocks collateral to 25 tokens.
The expansion caps a strong opening month. Binance Research reported a $193.3 million net rise in user stock exposure for the week to July 1. However, that figure fell 15% from $227.3 million the week before.
Binance says users acquired more than $1 billion in US equities after it opened US stock trading on June 1, with roughly 73% of stockholders based in emerging markets.
“Binance launched direct stocks on June 1, giving users access to over 7,000 U.S. stocks and ETFs, right alongside their crypto. In just 30 days after the launch, users have acquired more than $1 billion of U.S. equities on Binance, while generating close to $3 billion in trading volume. Around 73% of people using Binance’s direct stocks come from emerging markets, the places traditional brokerages have underserved for decades.”
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Warning Signs Behind the Headline Numbers
Binance’s own data reveals heavy concentration. Technology absorbed $159 million, or 83% of net inflows, in the latest weekly report. Binance Research titled that report “From Missiles to Memory” after inflows rotated from defense stocks into memory and chip names.
The pattern runs deeper than one week. Tech accounts for 71% of all stock holdings, with semiconductors alone drawing 48% of allocations. Meanwhile, just over 700 of more than 7,000 available assets have traded, roughly 10% of the catalog.
Against that backdrop, accepting SOXLB (triple-leveraged semiconductor token) as collateral looks bold. The token tracks a 3x leveraged semiconductor ETF, so a chip downturn could hit both positions and their collateral.
In addition, bStocks already back loans through a tokenized stocks collateral market on BNB Chain.
Competition raises further questions. Ondo controls about $870 million of the nearly $1.08 billion tokenized stock market, dwarfing bStocks’ visible share.
Regulatory friction adds pressure too. Binance logged record weekly crypto outflows of $1.23 billion as the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) rules took hold.
Collateral expansion may deepen bStocks liquidity, but it could equally concentrate leverage in the same few volatile trades. With weekly inflows already cooling, the next fund flow reports should reveal which effect dominates.
The post Binance Expands bStocks After $193 Million Debut, but Warning Signs Emerge appeared first on BeInCrypto.
The world’s biggest stablecoins are increasingly becoming chain-specific financial products, with Tether’s USDt (USDT) and Circle’s USDC (USDC) serving distinct roles across the crypto ecosystem rather than competing head-on.
Dune’s Digital Asset Brief found that USDT overwhelmingly dominates onchain payments. During the first half of 2026, the biggest stablecoin settled about $95 billion in identified commerce payments, compared with $14 billion for second-biggest USDC. It also accounted for roughly 92% of the $48 billion in business-to-business payment volume. On Tron, USDT’s largest network, around 93% of the token’s supply is held in ordinary wallets rather than on exchanges, underscoring its role as a payment and remittance asset.
USDC, meanwhile, has established itself as the dominant stablecoin in decentralized finance. USDC on Base processed roughly $2.6 trillion in transfer volume in June, the highest of any token-chain pair, while on Ethereum, that stablecoin handled another $1.6 trillion.
USDC on Base recorded daily velocity of about 20 times its circulating supply in June, reflecting its extensive use in trading and DeFi. Source: Dune
The findings suggest the traditional USDT-versus-USDC narrative is becoming less useful. Instead, each stablecoin is carving out its own niche, with USDT dominating payments and USDC underpinning much of crypto’s trading and DeFi activity.
USDT’s supply is split almost evenly between Tron and Ethereum, while USDC remains heavily concentrated on Ethereum despite expanding to newer blockchains. Source: Dune
The findings come as the two digital assets continue to dominate the stablecoin market. Together, they account for roughly 83% of the sector’s approximately $315 billion market capitalization, according to Dune, which tracked more than 200 stablecoin tokens across multiple blockchains.
Related: UN agency moves Stellar blockchain payment initiative beyond pilot stage
US lawmakers reshape stablecoin rules
The stablecoin sector has gained momentum in the United States following the passage of the GENIUS Act. Signed into law in 2025, GENIUS established the first federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, paving the way for banks and other companies to issue US dollar-pegged digital assets.
Lawmakers are now debating the CLARITY Act, which would establish a broader market structure for digital assets by defining when crypto assets fall under the jurisdiction of the US Securities and Exchange Commission or the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. While the bill does not regulate stablecoins directly, it would shape the broader regulatory environment in which stablecoin issuers, exchanges and DeFi platforms operate.
CLARITY cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May and could receive a full Senate vote before the August recess, although Galaxy recently trimmed its odds of passage before the break to 50% as lawmakers run short on time.
Magazine: Kraken’s $600M stablecoin firm, Huione scandal deepens: Asia Express
Japan’s bond market stress deepened Monday as the 10-year yield touched 2.825%, its highest level since October 1996. The surge threatens the easy money that funded multi-year rallies in stocks and Bitcoin (BTC).
The yen trades near 162 per dollar, its weakest since 1986, even after Tokyo spent a record sum defending it this spring.
Japan Bond Market Faces More Supply and a Shrinking Buyer
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government plans to mobilize over ¥370 trillion ($2.28 billion) in public and private investment across 17 strategic sectors through fiscal 2040. The roughly $2.3 trillion program implies heavier bond issuance ahead.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan keeps trimming its bond purchases. Reuters reported that policymakers may pause the taper only from fiscal 2027. Until then, the market’s largest buyer keeps stepping back.
Demand elsewhere looks fragile. A weak 10-year auction preceded Monday’s yield spike, and 20-year and 40-year sales follow later this month. Japan’s debt above 200% of GDP leaves little room to absorb higher borrowing costs.
“Less demand at auction plus more supply plus a smaller BOJ bid means yields get pushed higher mechanically, not just sentimentally,” noted macro analyst Bull Theory.
Carry Trade Unwind Risk Hangs Over Bitcoin and Stocks
Investors have borrowed cheap yen for years to fund positions in US equities, Treasuries, and crypto. Higher Japanese yields raise that funding cost and give capital a reason to come home. Repaying those loans means selling the very assets the borrowed money bought.
The precedent is fresh. A surprise BOJ hike in July 2024 triggered a carry trade unwind, which the Bank for International Settlements later detailed in a bulletin.
The Nikkei fell 12.4% on August 5, 2024, its worst day since 1987. Bitcoin briefly slid below $50,000 in the same rout.
Positioning now looks stretched again. Data compiled by LSEG shows yen short bets near $11.3 billion, the largest since July 2024.
Policy tools are losing traction. The Ministry of Finance disclosed a record ¥11.73 trillion ($73.6 billion) in yen-buying intervention between April 28 and May 27. The currency has since surrendered all of those gains and returned to four-decade lows.
The BOJ’s June 16 hike to 1%, its highest rate in 31 years, changed little. Goldman Sachs responded with a more bearish forecast, seeing the yen at 165 per dollar within a year. Analysts already frame further BOJ hikes as a direct risk for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin traded near $63,676 at press time, up 3% over the past 24 hours. Equities carry similar exposure after the Nikkei’s record run in June.
This week’s 30-year auction and the BOJ’s next signals now become key tests. A gradual adjustment would let markets adapt, while a disorderly unwind could spread volatility across stocks and crypto within days.
The post Why Japan’s Bond Market Could Kill the Easy-Money Rally in Stocks and Bitcoin appeared first on BeInCrypto.
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