The latest draft of the "CLARITY Act": Prohibits earning profits solely from holding stablecoins

According to CoinDesk, cryptocurrency industry practitioners saw the latest provisions regarding stablecoin yields in the revised version of the Senate's "Digital Asset Market Clarity Act" during a closed-door review meeting on Capitol Hill on Monday. The initial impression is that the relevant language is too narrow and not clear enough.

The new provisions were announced last Friday by Senators Angela Alsobrooks and Thom Tillis. According to a person familiar with the current draft, the new provisions will prohibit earning yields solely from holding stablecoins, while restricting any practices that equate the program with bank deposits, and setting further limitations on other potentially allowed activities, with the specific identification mechanism for activity-based stablecoin rewards still unclear.

This compromise stems from the lobbying struggle between the cryptocurrency industry and the banking sector: the banking industry insists that stablecoin rewards should not be similar to interest-bearing bank deposits, arguing that such competing products could harm the banking sector and suppress lending. The final compromise allows for reward programs based on user stablecoin activities but prohibits rewards based on balances.

The closed-door review aims to push the Senate Banking Committee to schedule a hearing, which is an important step for the bill toward a full Senate vote. A similar version of the "Clarity Act" was passed in the House of Representatives last year, and another version has also passed the Senate Agriculture Committee's markup process. The advancement of the bill still faces other obstacles: all parties need to reach an agreement on the DeFi regulatory framework, and Democrats insist on including provisions that prohibit senior government officials from profiting personally from the cryptocurrency industry, a provision clearly targeting President Trump.