The US banking lobby has tried to walk back the stablecoin yield compromise it helped negotiate with Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks, throwing fresh uncertainty over the path to a Senate vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act with the markup window already inside its final weeks.
The pushback was distilled in the latest Thinking Crypto podcast by host Tony Edward, who said the move was the latest in a long pattern of stalling tactics from incumbent banks now finding themselves behind crypto-native firms in the race to build new payment rails.
"You give a mouse a cookie and it will ask for a glass of milk. You know that stablecoin yield compromise that the crypto industry and the banks came together on? Well, all of a sudden, the banking groups released a statement today criticising the compromise on stablecoin yield with Senator Tom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks, saying it falls short of protecting bank deposits," Edward said.
The deal carved out a narrow yield channel for stablecoins that are deployed in genuine on-chain utility rather than parked passively, while keeping a wider ban on yield products that resemble uninsured deposits. Bank trades, including the American Bankers Association, have argued the carve-out still erodes the deposit base by giving consumers a parallel place to earn yield outside the regulated banking system.
The two senators have publicly held firm.
"Eleanor Terrett reported that the joint statement from Senator Tom Tillis and Senator Alsobrooks on the stablecoin yield compromise amid pushback from the bank trades signalled the deal is final," Edward said. "They said we respectfully agree to disagree."
"The crux of this is that the banks are taking your deposits, parking it at the Fed, earning 4% and they pocket the majority of that, 90-something percent of it, and they give you 0.01%. They give you the breadcrumbs, they get the big bonuses," he said.
He also flagged a wider strategic motive for slow-walking the broader market structure bill.
"They could be trying to hold up the Clarity Act as much as possible because many of them are still playing catch-up. Don't get me wrong, these banks are doing stablecoins, tokenising, launching crypto custody, trading and much more, but they're behind the curve. You have companies like Ripple and Coinbase and Circle and Anchorage and BitGo. So if the Clarity Act gets passed, they would have an advantage against the banks who are the incumbents," Edward said.
The political tape on the bill is still moving in the industry's favour. Polymarket now puts the probability that President Donald Trump signs crypto market structure legislation into law this year at 64%, up from late-April lows in the high 30s, after the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise text broke the most recent stalemate.
The legislative window is the constraint. The practical Senate Banking Committee markup window closes in mid-May, with recess starting on the 25th and the midterm cycle absorbing most working days from there. Coin Bureau and other industry analysts have warned that if the Clarity Act misses the Memorial Day window, the next workable alignment of House, Senate and White House could slip out as far as 2030.
For the banks publicly distancing themselves from the deal, the calculation is whether the ABA-led coalition can extract more concessions before final markup or whether the senators' "agree to disagree" line really does close the door. For the crypto industry, the immediate question is whether the Tillis-Alsobrooks framework holds up through the next round of amendments without giving back the consumer-yield door it has just opened.