Responding to lobbying by Wall Street banks, crypto group Stand With Crypto said it recruited its online members to message US senators in their states more than 250,000 times, rejecting the bankers’ attempt to block the path to stablecoin rewards in the National Stablecoins Innovation Guidance and Establishment Act. of the USA (GENIUS).
The letter drafted by Stand With Crypto, a US pro-crypto member organization initially established by Coinbase, urges lawmakers to ignore banking advocates who launched an effort in August to rewrite the law to completely shut down stablecoin issuers’ ability to offer returns to users.
“Lawmakers chose to protect the rewards because they know they are for consumers,” according to the template letter that will be automatically sent to politicians in each member state if the member decides to implement it. “A rewards ban would prevent consumers from getting value with fully backed digital dollars, even as banks pushed to protect their credit card rewards as recently as last year.”
The GENIUS Act, which became law earlier this year and is already in the midst of being adopted by federal regulators, prevents stablecoin issuers from offering interest or yield directly, but does not prevent affiliates or exchanges of the issuers from doing so. As a result, bankers have argued that there could be a massive loss of deposits and money market fund activity as this stablecoin rivalry emerges.
“Congress must protect the flow of credit to American businesses and families and the stability of the major financial market by closing the stablecoin interest payment loophole,” groups such as the American Bankers Association, the Banking Policy Institute, the Financial Services Forum and others argued in their own campaign.
Crypto lobbyists quickly responded to the bankers, seeking to protect the GENIUS Act, the first major crypto law passed in the US.
While the U.S. Treasury Department and other financial regulators have said they have begun trying to implement the stablecoin law, the workers who would be crafting those regulations are largely sidelined from that effort right now. The US government is largely shut down due to a budget shutdown, as Congress let the federal spending plan lapse and has not yet agreed on a path forward.
Stand With Crypto reports that more than 2.7 million cryptocurrency fans have registered with the organization.
