a16z crypto policy head Miles Jennings argued on X on Thursday that the banking industry's campaign against the CLARITY Act will backfire, because blocking the bill leaves in place the stablecoin yield arrangement banks have lobbied hardest to stop.
"The bewildering thing about TradFi's extreme efforts to kill CLARITY is that they are likely accelerating their own obsolescence," Jennings wrote. He said the GENIUS Act is already law and "opened the floodgates for dollars to move onchain," and that other real-world assets will follow whether or not CLARITY passes.
Without the market-structure bill, "crypto intermediaries will keep paying yield on stablecoin deposits under GENIUS, the very outcome banks have been lobbying so hard against." CLARITY, he said, "offers TradFi a lifeline by letting institutions participate in the onchain economy, even enabling them to use permissionless DeFi." Without it, "many institutions will be sidelined."
Jennings is head of policy and general counsel for a16z crypto, which was among the firms that signed the industry letter urging Senate leaders to schedule a floor vote on the bill.
After the Senate Banking Committee voted 15-9 on May 14 to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633), which would divide digital-asset oversight between the SEC and CFTC, six banking trade groups — the American Bankers Association, Bank Policy Institute, Consumer Bankers Association, Financial Services Forum, Independent Community Bankers of America and National Bankers Association — said the bill should be strengthened "by tightening the prohibition on interest-like rewards for holding stablecoin."
