Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong says any move to reopen the Genius Act crosses a massive “red line.”
He’s calling out big banks for leaning on political muscle to squash rising competition from stablecoins and fintech innovators.
In a fiery X post over the weekend, Armstrong admitted he was downright stunned at how banks can lobby Congress so boldly without anyone batting an eye.
He vowed that Coinbase won’t stand idly by if there’s talk of tweaking the law.
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“We’re not letting anyone touch the Genius Act,” he flat-out said.
Armstrong even threw in a forecast that in a couple of years, those same banks will probably switch sides, pushing hard for rules that let them offer interest and yields on stablecoins once they spot the huge potential.
He called their current push a complete waste of time and frankly, pretty shady.
The Genius Act, hammered out after endless back-and-forth negotiations earlier this year, puts a firm stop to stablecoin issuers paying interest straight to holders.
But it smartly leaves room for platforms and other parties to hand out rewards, keeping things fair and innovative.
The fight over the Genius Act
Max Avery, a sharp board member and business development leader at Digital Ascension Group, broke down exactly why some banking heavyweights are nudging lawmakers to revisit the Genius Act.
He explained that any new tweaks wouldn’t just stick to banning direct interest. Instead, they’d go further, clamping down on broader “rewards” that let platforms share yields indirectly.
Avery dismissed the “safety worries” and fears over community bank deposits as overblown, pointing to solid research showing no big exodus from smaller banks.
On a brighter note, lawmakers recently floated ideas for tax breaks on small stablecoin payments up to $200 in regulated, dollar-backed ones that could skip capital gains hits entirely.
There’s also talk of letting people defer taxes on staking or mining rewards for years, giving crypto users some real breathing room.
