The stablecoin market grew 49% in 2025 to reach $306 billion after Congress passed the GENIUS Act, and two prominent digital asset advocates are now pressing the Senate Banking Committee to extend that regulatory clarity to the entire crypto market. The supporting evidence appears in resolving the stablecoin yield question.
Summer Mersinger and Ji Hun Kim argue in a co-authored opinion piece that the CLARITY Act is the logical and necessary next step for U.S. digital asset policy.
The numbers behind that argument are hard to dismiss. Nearly 70 million Americans, roughly one in five, currently hold crypto assets, and the broader digital asset market is valued at approximately $3.2 trillion.
Without a governing market structure framework, advocates warn the U.S. risks repeating the talent and capital drain that preceded the stablecoin legislation.
What the CLARITY Act Would Actually Do
The proposed legislation would establish registration and oversight rules for trading venues and intermediaries, draw clear jurisdictional lines between the SEC and CFTC, and set disclosure and compliance requirements across the full token lifecycle.
It would also provide legal protections for non-custodial technologies under U.S. law, areas that have remained unresolved for years.
The stakes are visible in the talent and infrastructure data already. The number of U.S.-based blockchain developers dropped 51% over the past decade, and nearly 90% of global centralized exchange volume currently flows through offshore venues.
Mersinger and Kim point to this as a direct consequence of regulatory ambiguity, not market preference.
The EU, Singapore, and the UAE have each enacted their own digital asset market structure regimes, giving those jurisdictions a concrete competitive edge in attracting crypto firms and institutional capital.
Recruiters who previously described senior crypto talent fleeing to offshore jurisdictions now report that 90% of senior crypto leadership searches are U.S.-based, a shift Mersinger and Kim attribute directly to the GENIUS Act’s passage.
Bipartisan Compromise Clears a Key Hurdle
One of the most contested provisions in months of Senate negotiations was the question of stablecoin yield. Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks reached a bipartisan resolution on that issue, clearing a significant path toward a Senate markup of the CLARITY Act. The compromise expands the scope of the prohibition on yield-bearing stablecoins while giving the broader bill enough cross-aisle support to move forward.
The Senate Banking Committee has spent the better part of two years building the legislative foundation for this moment.
Mersinger and Kim argue that the GENIUS Act’s measurable success, from institutional capital entering the market to Circle and Ripple receiving provisional national banking charters from the OCC, offers a direct proof of concept for what market structure rules can deliver at scale.
The central argument is straightforward: clear rules produced investment and onshoring when applied to stablecoins, and the same logic applies to the rest of the digital asset market.
Whether the Senate Banking Committee acts before more trading activity, protocol development, and institutional capital migrate to jurisdictions that already have those rules in place remains the defining question for U.S. crypto policy in 2026.
Not Financial Advice: This article is for informational purposes only. Crypto investments are highly volatile. Always do your own research.
