Jamie Dimon is not a fan of Brian Armstrong’s lobbying playbook. The JPMorgan CEO took aim at his Coinbase counterpart, accusing him of spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get the Clarity Act passed, a bill that would redraw the regulatory lines around digital assets in the US.
The Clarity Act, which would establish clearer jurisdictional boundaries between the SEC and CFTC on digital assets, has become the most consequential, and most contentious, piece of crypto regulation working its way through Congress.
The stablecoin yield fight at the heart of it all
The core disagreement centers on whether stablecoins that offer interest-like returns to holders should be regulated like bank deposits. JPMorgan and the traditional banking lobby argue yes, that any product offering rewards functions like deposit-taking and should face equivalent oversight. Armstrong and Coinbase see that framework as a backdoor way to kneecap crypto’s competitive advantage over traditional savings products.
The feud boiled over publicly at Davos in January 2026, where Dimon confronted Armstrong directly over the issue. Coinbase subsequently withdrew its support for the Clarity Act, objecting to Senate language it viewed as overly restrictive on stablecoin reward offerings. The bill had already passed the House in mid-2025 but stalled in the Senate Banking Committee, largely because of this exact disagreement.
