The line between traditional banks and crypto could soon disappear. In Davos, White House crypto advisor David Sacks said these two worlds will soon become one. Indeed, the CLARITY Act, a bill determining the future of the sector in the United States, is at stake. Behind the debates on the performance of stablecoins, a complete reconfiguration of the financial industry is taking shape, between political tensions, power issues and strategic ambitions.
In brief
- The CLARITY Act, an American bill, aims to structure the crypto market but faces a blockage on the question of the yield of stablecoins.
- David Sacks, crypto advisor to the White House, says this text is the key to a future merger between traditional banks and the crypto industry.
- Banking players oppose returns on stablecoins, fearing a flight of deposits, while crypto companies see it as a lever for innovation.
- Despite current tensions, Washington envisions a unified digital assets industry, where banks and crypto would operate under the same framework.
The CLARITY Act gets bogged down in the conflict over the yield of stablecoins
During an intervention at the World Economic Forum in Davos, David Sacks, crypto advisor to the White House, pointed out the political impasse surrounding the CLARITY Act bill, currently being examined in the US Senate.
The text, intended to regulate the structure of the crypto market, faces marked opposition on a central point: the return offered by stablecoins. “The debate on performance has become the main obstacle to the adoption of the project”Sacks said on CNBC.
He called for compromise between banks, lawmakers and the crypto industry, emphasizing that “the output is important philosophically for them, but the main thing remains to obtain an overall structural framework”.
Here are the major sticking points raised in the debate:
- Crypto companies defend the right to offer a return via their stablecoins, in the name of financial innovation and competitiveness;
- Traditional banks fear a flight of deposits to higher-yielding products, which would threaten their business models based on low-interest accounts;
- The current bill excludes returns for stablecoins, while sparing banks, according to criticism expressed by some players in the sector.
This fault line has caused a notable rupture. Coinbase has announcement its withdrawal from the legislative process. “Too many problems” in the text, wrote its CEO Brian Armstrong on X, denouncing an unbalanced approach which “removes returns on stablecoins while protecting banks from competition”.
This withdrawal resonates as a political alarm signal, calling into question the outcome of a project nevertheless considered central to the future of the crypto industry in the United States.
A unified crypto industry as a horizon
In a second part of his intervention, David Sacks delivered a much more inclusive long-term vision. For him, the adoption of the CLARITY Act will not only mark further regulation in the crypto ecosystem, but it will lay the foundations for a merger of sectors.
“After the adoption of the project, banks will fully enter the crypto industry”he assured, predicting the end of the distinction between traditional financial institutions and blockchain companies. He goes even further by stating: “we will no longer have a banking industry and a crypto universe, but a single crypto industry”.
This vision is based on a pragmatic observation: banks will eventually integrate the issuance of stablecoins into their economic model, in particular by also adopting yield mechanisms.
Although the GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, prohibited stablecoin issuers from paying interest, it remains possible for third-party players, such as Coinbase, to offer rewards to their users. This regulatory vagueness accentuates the need for a coherent framework, where banks and crypto can evolve with shared rules of the game.
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