Empire
January 9, 2026

Lighter’s Token Launch, Erebor Raises $350M & Walmart's Crypto Strategy

How Stablecoins Eat the Regional Bank by Empire

Author: Rob Hadick, Date: October 2023

This summary breaks down why 2026 is the year crypto disappears into the background of American retail. It is for investors tracking the collision of legacy finance and on-chain rails.

  • 💡 Why is Walmart becoming the most important crypto on-ramp in rural America?
  • 💡 How did Lighter’s "quiet" token launch outperform the hype-heavy meta?
  • 💡 Will the banking lobby successfully kill the Clarity Act to protect $6 trillion in deposits?

Rob Hadick and Jason Yanowitz explain why the most important market signals are currently found in retail apps rather than exchange charts. They argue that the infrastructure for mass adoption is being installed by the world's largest retailers while the industry looks the other way.

Top 3 Ideas

🏗️ The Walmart Trojan Horse

"Walmart is the first touch point for a lot of middle class rural America."

  • Retail Financial Rails: Walmart’s One Pay app now ranks higher than Coinbase and Robin Hood. This creates a massive user base that trusts a retail brand over a crypto exchange.
  • The Banking Moat: Legacy banks rely on a regulatory monopoly to keep deposits. Stablecoins break this by offering better rates and faster settlement than any 50-year-old core banking system.
  • Domestic Adoption: While crypto started as a cross-border tool, it is moving into domestic retail. This means on-chain dollars will soon be used for groceries and gas rather than just speculation.

🏗️ The Anti-Hype Launch

"If you build a product that people want to use, the token will follow."

  • Quiet Token Strategy: Lighter and Monad are avoiding massive pre-launch hype cycles. This reduces initial volatility and allows the market to price the asset based on actual usage.
  • Product Market Fit: Dragonfly is doubling down on perps and prediction markets. These sectors show real growth regardless of whether the broader market is rallying.

🏗️ The Regulatory Standoff

"The banking lobby is very concerned around what's happening in the Genius Act."

  • Deposit Flight Risk: The American Banking Association is lobbying against stablecoin yield. They fear $6 trillion in deposits will migrate to on-chain products that offer superior returns.
  • Institutional Acceptance: MSCI is keeping digital asset companies in its indices. This signals that traditional finance is no longer debating if crypto belongs but is instead figuring out how to own the infrastructure.

Actionable Takeaways

  • 🌐 The Macro Pivot: The market is bifurcating into protocols with real product market fit and a long tail of zombie assets.
  • ⚡ The Tactical Edge: Monitor the "One Pay" app ecosystem for integration opportunities.
  • 🎯 The Bottom Line: 2026 is the year stablecoins move from treasury management to domestic retail reality.

Podcast Link: Click here to listen

I don't know if this will what this will mean for you know your Ethereum or your Salana but 2026 is going to be a huge year for stable coin adoption not just in you know these you know call it treasury management use cases card use cases but it's going to be really big and people actually using them domestically as well in everyday lives nothing said on empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products this podcast is forformational purposes only and the Views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Block Works. Our hosts, guests, and the Block Works team may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed. All right, everyone. Happy New Year. Very excited about this one. Per usual, we've got two of us, not three of us, unfortunately. Rob, happy new year. Santi, shame. Shame on you. But Rob, happy new year, man.

You know, happy new year. Santi was like a like a last minute drop, too. Like, what is with that? I know. Traffic. Come on. I can't believe that. That That's like the type of thing that somebody says when they just don't want to show up. At least make up that you're on like a big customer call or something. Traffic. Traffic. Okay. Come on, man. Um, what's going on? How are the How are the holidays, new year? How's the start to the year?

The start of the year has been good, right? So, you know, a lot of people are circling back, right? They're they're trying to trying to make things happen. How'd you get to the top? Yeah, that's right. But you know, Bitcoin was up till it's down back to like 91 today, but you know, we ran up to 94. We've got some positive market momentum. You know, we got a tiny little alt rally. Nobody's you know, doing any sort of tax loss harvesting anymore, right? You know, redemptions of the funds are almost over.

Do you Let me ask you this. So, do you you know every single year for like a decade, it's like you see that the the tweets on like December 29th, it's like, "Hey, reminder like crypto doesn't have uh wash tradings or whatever whatever the rule is. Um so, if you sell your Bitcoin, you can just buy it right back and book the loss and then you have you still have the same Bitcoin. Do you do that?

No, I I don't actively manage anything, right? because other than the fund because it just it it's the wrong ROI on my time I think to be you know spending my time thinking about trading or you know anything like that and may maybe you know it'd be better if I I did that but um I just have things that I don't sell right and so I feel like an idiot around December 30th and everyone's tweeting I'm like a god I should should really do this and I'm just like I'm not I'm not doing this I don't have the time no yeah but hopefully some listeners are smarter than we are and did that. Um, how are you thinking about the year? I mean, we did our predictions, but like any like big things you're trying to do right now, like big I don't know any what I want to hear about like what's happening on the fun side of things. Like what's Yeah, tell me about tell me about what's going on your end.

Listen, I think we're, you know, as we talked about on the prediction side, I think 2026 will be a good year. I think it'll be a year of have and have nots. I think we'll continue to see dispersion and bifurcation between those who are doing well and those who aren't. Um, that's both on the fund side, that's on the, you know, investment side. I don't think we're going to see like a broad alt rally, but I do think we're going to see the things that people that are doing well that have product market fit, they're they're going to do well. I'm not, you know, Santi over here thinking that the whole world is uh burning and that we're all going to doomer. He's a real doomer right now. Yeah, I know.

You know, we're sitting on the fun side as well. you know, we had we were actually internally looking at our, you know, deployment pace and, you know, how much money we put to work last year and doing kind of this end of year review and we had realized that we actually put a lot of money to work last year. Uh, and a couple of those things, a couple of the really big checks will be announced this month. Um, and so they were kind of late things that we did late last year, but we we were really active even though the market wasn't that active. And I think going into 26, our perspective is that we'll probably actually slow down a little bit where because there is we do think there's going to be um a lot more interest in, you know, quote unquote the growth equity stage and maybe a little bit later than we technically get or normally get involved.

Um and we think the early stage is probably still going to, you know, probably go sideways for a little bit and we'll probably stay pretty steady there. So, you know, I'm I'm really optimistic about this year, but I don't think it's going to be, you know, um a banger either way. There's not going to be a lot of downside or a lot of upside. I think it's going to be kind of slow and steady. A lot of the same.

You guys have um how many port codes do you guys have? Like 150 160. It's higher than that. Uh I couldn't tell you the exact number right now obviously, but it we're, you know, we're on our fourth fund right now. And what what types of the leading question into like what types of companies right now are the hottest in the Dragonfly portfolio.

I so as you can probably tell through a lot of the things that I like to talk about, but I mean the fastest growing stuff in the portfolio right now has to do with stable coins or prediction markets. Um obviously prediction markets specifically is um or at least the the most notable one is Poly Market. you know, we do have um we're also probably been one of the most active perex investors uh in in crypto. Um and so our perex investments, a couple of them very notably Lighter um has been doing really really well. Uh we're you know generally long a lot of DeFi um and you know DeFi continues to come along and do well and so we're you know actually I think more constructive than most in terms of DeFi funding right now.

I think then if you look at like call it the longer tail there's a couple of um things that are I would say you know kind of don't fit as neatly into a box like Double Zero where the token hasn't performed as well but where like if you actually look at like the amount of stake on Salana that is running through Double Zero that continues to just like drive up right and you look at the their you know what they're launching and so there's a few things that are we're seeing do really well from a you know KPI perspective that maybe the tokens aren't doing as well etc but we're we're we're long-term bullish I mean I think listen the whole market is like stable coins, prediction markets, exchanges, you know, like that is what everybody's focused on.

Why did Lighter do the token strategy in the way that they did? It felt like they launched it in kind of like a quiet just like calm I don't know. I feel like Humidify did this too is like they just kind of like dropped the token. There wasn't a whole thing leading up to it. Um I don't know. I I I'm not sure if that's maybe like a new a new thing that'll actually start playing out is like just don't don't build so much hype around the token but yeah tell me about I honestly just love to hear your take on Lighter because you guys are a big shareholder and curious to get your take on like them versus Hyperliquid the token strategy. Yeah I just want to maybe we can pontificate on that.

I mean token strategy side, I think you saw this with Monad as well. you saw it with, you know, you said you talked about Humidify um you know, obviously no Lighter doing this at the end of the year when you've done these call it like these big predeposit vaults and you've done a um you know kind of a lot of work up to the end to try to get like people like super excited and all this like pre-baked TVL and you know a lot of um work around building to this like momentous moment right I think what we found a lot is that the tokens don't do Well, right. And so sometimes maybe you get a little pop and then they come way down. It's a lot more volatile in in the beginning.

You know, we always tell our portfolio companies if you build a product that people want to use, the token will follow. It will do well eventually, right? It doesn't you know, I think it's, you know, who is it? It's it's Warren Buffett or, you know, that talks about, you know, how markets like short-term are a a way mechanism. Um, but, you know, long term they're Do you think Buffett likes Lighter? Yeah, I I think he's probably a big Lighter guy, you know, like he's probably like, "Give me a perex, right?"

But you see an imbalance in the market cap of Hyperliquid at 9 billion and Lighter at 700 million. He's like, "Ah, this is a valuation fundamentals play fundamentals. Look at the cash. I need Santon here to tell me about the relative value of cash flows of Lighter versus Hyperliquid." Yeah, but um so listen like Lighter launched and it's had uh you know it had you know pretty predictable you know price movements within a normal band despite having this airdrop and it's traded very well to start the year and so I think we saw same thing with Monad people got you know traded up and it traded down a little bit but it's been within a range and it's been kind of you know up only for the past few weeks and so uh our perspective is that the the markets follow what you know your ability ability to build something that people want and you shouldn't worry that much about like you know the market cycle or what you're launching into um in terms of how you think about like long-term value and so I I think Vlad kind of took that to heart as well and so you know he didn't I mean and he told people like it's probably going to be the end of the year and you know it's during you know the end of season 2 etc. So it wasn't like he didn't you know uh you know kind of put that out there and there was a very active um points market for uh for Lighter where people were buying the points you know speculating what the price of the the TG would be but you know I find this to be a much better way to uh to launch and you know um I don't know I mean you you're the one who sees all of these projects you guys have all the data like you know do you like have any your research guys seen any you know correlation about you know where the market is and how they you know prepare for these and price action.

Uh the raw honest answer is like probably yes, but I haven't I don't know. Um we've been we just actually we launched our new website today. So I've been just had we're recording this Wednesday night at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday night and just uh yeah, we just launched our new site today. So basically like uh you can think of it as like Coin Gecko meets DeFi Llama. Um, you know, we've talked about this a couple times on the show, but we we we got out of the news business. Um, turning more into a data platform and uh we still think owning the distribution is super super super important and um we but we didn't like news as a distribution engine. We but we do like data as a distribution engine. So yeah, we launched this new site and um so yeah, I have not been doing much research on light over cyber liquid. Been heads down trying to get this site live.

So yeah, I mean I listen, we're um it's interesting to read everything that's happening on Twitter because I think also Vlad, the founder of Lighter, is like a very polarizing figure. Uh there's like people seem to really love him or really hate him. He's he really is just, you know, kind of building out in public and willing to say whatever, you know, comes to mind and willing to be, you know, very transparent. And um for some people they they've taken I think kind of offense to the way he just kind of says whatever's on his mind. And for others I think they they've enjoyed that. And so um I think that's a smart strategy by the way because Jeff is so quiet and behind the scenes that you have to have a um yeah I mean you just have you have to do oftenimes the opposite of what the other competitor is doing. Um and I think I I I like what Vlad is doing. He's clear I mean he's clearly won the hearts and minds of a lot of the right people. So yeah.

So, we're I mean, Hyperliquid obviously has a huge head start and a tremendous business and a tremendous um exchange and, you know, they we're continue to think they'll do, you know, really well. But, uh, you know, uh, Lighter is definitely the, you know, mo best competitor we've seen so far. Uh, and from an infrastructure perspective, from a team perspective, and so we're excited to see, you know, how that continues to evolve. and it's held up really well post TG in terms of you know volume and and open interest and so um we'll be interested to see how that goes.

Speaking of, uh winning hearts and minds, I have a stat for you. This is the stat of the year so far. Did you know the Worldcoin app is the number one wallet in the world more monthly active users than base meta mask and phantom? So this is using sensor tower. So the the people who do the the downloads for uh like it's like all the download information and data for iOS. Yeah. Interesting. Is is this MAUs? Oh yeah, it says MAU. MAUs. Yeah.

So I watched their um I watched them roll out their this new world app um a week or two ago and uh yeah, it's pretty impressive. I mean they had this whole like product integration with Tinder. So, I guess if you're on Tinder now, like you have to verify your identity using World. Um, and inside of World, I mean, you can Yeah, you can do you can convert like a whole bunch of currencies. You can pay with it. So, I don't know. I feel like we haven't heard much about World Coin recently. But, yeah, it's now the number one wallet, which was uh shocking to me. I'm interested on what um Opera Mini Pay is doing relative to uh to those guys because they're not on here. But um I mean that's a more of a a browser wallet, but uh that's been growing tremendously in emerging markets. And obviously my guess is that if you looked at the world data like it's mostly emerging markets as well.

What what is Opera? Uh so it's a like a like a browser, but they have Opera web browser. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they have this um thing called Mini Pay uh that they launched that was on on CLO that was actually like one of the fastest it was the actually the single fastest growing uh stable coin transaction wallet um and all of crypto for the most of the last two years. Uh it's really heavily in Africa and and you know other parts of call it Mina and a lot of emerging markets. Yeah. Okay.

So let's um let's talk about this then speaking of wallet. So, did you say Walmart? Um, Walmart just went live with crypto for their I think they have like 150 million weekly users. Uh, and they went live with crypto. So, you can actually you can't pay with Bitcoin at Walmart, but you can buy crypto in the Walmart app. You can sell crypto in the app. Um, you can uh like I don't know. I think you can get rewards in crypto. Um, and I'm curious if you see this and you're like, "Oh, that's a massive thing." and that's going to like you know they have the ability to take on like a bunch of these apps or if you're like oh this is a nothing burger.

I think we need to see a little bit of what happens over time so Walmart's a really interesting business because they have been trying to and you may or may not know this but they actually tried to get a banking charter in like 2018 2019 they've been trying to get into the um the financial services business for a very long period of time because What is Walmart? Walmart is They launched I was looking at their I didn't know anything about One Pay. They launched high they have high yield savings. They have credit cards. They have buy now pay later. Uh they have unlimited wireless uh mobile plan. They have peer-to-peer payments. And now they have crypto trading. Yeah.

Well, the thing about Walmart, right, is they are the, you know, biggest touch point and the first touch point for a lot of middle class rural America, right? And so they have really deep relationships with um kind of your average person in in the US right now. Uh they so right now they use thirdparty providers for all of these things. They also were using green dot for like a card thing as well. And uh yeah I think crypto trading is is uh zero hash powers it. Yeah it's one pay but zero hash underneath. Right. One pay right? Um and so they've been wanting to get more and more into the financial services business in the same way you've seen um a lot of this happen with telecoms and with um uh you know kind of these large retail platforms in in Latin America.

They've seen this play out especially in you know call it non- coastal cities right in like rural America um because people trust Walmart. They do all their shopping there. Um they've right now use all of its thirdparty providers. They see this as kind of a, you know, top of funnel to allow them to expand um the way they monetize, but they want to get deeper and deeper into those customers and they want to monetize more wholesomely without having to use these third party providers. So, I expect we'll see a lot more from them in going non-custodial because it'll be more easy for them to monetize those wallets. Same thing that we've talked about with like CLA, right? Um, you know, buying Bitcoin is one thing, but we're going to say stable coins. you know, I know.

So, they have a like a big like gift card business as well. They do um a lot of stuff actually where people are sending money as well overseas like a or a remittance business. And I expect we'll see um a lot of conversation about how crypto plays a role in that, right? And I think anybody who has, you know, a really deep relationship with a consumer base who is not digitally native but is also not being well served by the banks, they trust their teleam, their telecom companies, they trust people like Walmart and who they, you know, do most of their shopping with. And so if you can put together a really slick app that, you know, abstracts away some of the crypto, people are going to use it. and and the people like Walmart, they can do it much more um costefficiently and with much better unit economics than they could if they continue to use like these banking as a service providers, etc. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I just pulled this up. So, I pulled up the top finance apps. Walmart's One Pay is number 12. It's higher than Robin Hood, higher than Wells Fargo, higher than City, higher than Bank of America, higher than SoFi, higher than American Express, higher than Coinbase, higher than Credit One, Discover, Vanguard, Schwab. Very interesting. Very interesting. It seems like this is kind of like uh I don't know a story of fintech that's not being told right now is some of these I mean I feel like everyone talks about the super app in America and in the US and like how it actually can't really work in the US and how that was just kind of a phenomenon in the west or excuse me in the east and it's not really going to work in the in in the west but um yeah maybe this is the start of that actually changing.

Yeah, listen, Walmart, this has been they've been trying to do this for years. Uh, and they I mean they had to withdraw their banking application. I think it was in 22 uh because when the OC basically shut down allowing people, but you know, they still have a large financial services team there. And like this is clearly where they believe the road map is going. And by the way, you know, we're hearing that people that look like Walmart, that aren't as big, but also serve, you know, kind of the same demographic and the same geography both in the US and outside of the US, they're all very actively looking at crypto and stable coins as a way to provide financial services much more cheaply to their end customer. Um, because like the a lot of the banking as a service providers, they were and the embedded finance providers like they they were really costly and they didn't allow you to monetize appropriately. they didn't allow you to scale in the same way with some of those customers and using these blockchain rails like it's it's much much better uh user experience and it becomes much more easy to monetize them appropriately and to share some of that monetization as well assuming that you know um the you know clarity act doesn't have some sort of you know call it um uh basically revision of gen of of um the um the genius act to try to get rid of the um the yield uh rewards uh kind of carve out. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh speaking of banks, um did you guys do the Arabore deal? We're not shareholders. No. No. Why not? Um we by the we we we were close to you know kind of one of the original founders early on who um raised kind of a a small seed round and you know by the time um Arabore became what it is today and Palmer got involved it was a probably I would say outside of our strike zone a multi-billion dollar company. Why is something like this getting valued at $4 billion pre- launch? I know it's they have some customers already and stuff like that and they just got their FDIC approval and you know they I think I think their launch date is like either next month or the month after February March but like yeah is this just like the the the Peter Teal Palmer Lucky Joe Lawndale which is fine I I'll say this I we have not done a single banking deal right so there's a lot of you know this is obviously the one that has been most heralded and has done the best from a venture backing perspective um and There is a strong belief by a lot of people that you need a new digitally first, you know, stable coin first bank to go and serve this market which is growing tremendously quickly, right? We we have not done any of these banking deals.

Um there's been quite a few of them and a lot of amazing investors have have invested in them because my general belief has been that banks are not good venture businesses, right? They're very capital uh inefficient. They require a lot of capital to be put into the company over time. they don't scale um with the same reflexivity of other businesses um and they don't get at maturation they don't get kind of multiples that you you tend to pay um Arabore has defied that obviously you know and the kind of their valuations to your point because um I I think the people around the table and like how good the team is and expectation that that team can bring um you know call it a lot of business early on right um so um you know and get and regulatory uh you know approvals in a very fast amount of time.

Well, listen, I would say this about that like the OC is open for business. It's like very clear they are open for business right now. So, I would expect you to see you know people can debate how many, but I expect you to see 30 40 50 new OC charters this year to be honest, right? And they've been on um they've actually been on schedule. So, they've been telling people they're going to turn you around in a certain number of weeks and they've actually been turning everybody around in those number of weeks. And so I I don't think they move really quickly, but I I don't think uh a regulatory mode is the way to win this market at this point. Yeah. Interesting.

Um did we talk about Deal rolling out stable coin payroll funding? This is a couple weeks ago. Um but I'm Yeah, this is another one of the announcements where I'm like big big deal or not big deal. I I think all of these announcements by themselves are they matter but they're not you know call it big deals right but if you take them all together it's just very clear like the winds have change right you know um you know deal is you know a huge platform right and the fact that they're going to continue to do stablecoin they've been doing payouts on deal already they're going to do you know payroll funding uh as well like this is just there there's a couple startups that do this already um that market has been growing really quickly again it's primarily an outside the US non-domemestic use case, right?

But the reality is is and we talked about this with the CLA USD thing is that the more and more people have stable coins in their wallets because they're spending at Walmart with a stable coin or they're spending at CLA with a stable coin and it's being abstracted away then like the whole system starts to work together, right? and you start to see this ballooning of adoption that like I listen my my general perspective is that the 2026 I don't know if this will what this will mean for you know your Ethereum or your Salana but 2026 is going to be a huge year for stable coin adoption but not just in you know this you know crossborder or not just in um you know these you know call treasury management use cases card use cases is, but it's going to be really big and people actually using them domestically as well in everyday lives.

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Yeah, I think so too. I think so too. Uh, speaking of that, can we talk clarity? Yes. Do you want to get a state of play first? Yeah. Um, basically there's a I think everyone was very optimistic that we would get two pieces of big legislation in 2025. Stable coins and then market structure. As the year went on, it became very clear that we were going to get one of those and not the other one. So, we obviously got genius and we got stable coins. We didn't get market structure. Um, I think the Dems, uh, it has been very tough to get a lot of the Dems on board and there's been very strong lobbying against the, uh, market structure bill. And so, here we are in January. Um, I'm looking at some of the prediction market odds. We've got um, uh, the chance that we get crypto market structure bill becomes law before April is at 20%. before May is 47%. And before uh before 2027, so in 2026, the chance is 74%.

I have heard from I've heard five different things from five different people this week about clarity. Um so I would just I mean let's get the six source. What what are you hearing? Yeah, I mean from our side um there was a article that came out from uh the ABA, the American Banking Association. Yeah. Um I think it was was it yesterday? Um that came out and this has been a long a topic of conversation, but you know the banking lobby is very concerned around what's happening in the Genius Act in terms of there being a carve out for rewards that they see as a carve out to pay yield. I think the banking a lot of the the banking administ um kind of sector has taken the perspective that the um that these are basically like money market funds and we already have legislation for how to manage money market funds and so they needs to be carved out of genius and just be you know uh essentially ruled by money market fund legislation. And so they've been pushing if there we're going to get, you know, some version of clarity or some markup of clarity, whatever that looks like, to have in the Clarity Act a essentially um a change to Genius, which gets rid of this um this this kind of carveout for rewards.

Um what we're hearing right now is that you know the right essentially right now there's we're in the Senate Banking Committee or the Senate Banking Committee is the one who has the next move right so the Senate Banking Committee um has to provide a markup by of Clarity Act that passed the House last year by sometime next week. um they and then they would vote on it and it would they would vote to advance it out of committee and then to kind of a full floor u full Senate conversation, right? The Senate Banking Committee has 13 Republicans, has 12 Dems um or 11 Dems. I think the what we um understand is that you know the Dems still, which by the way, Elizabeth Warren is the ranking Democrat on uh on the Senate Bank Committee. The Dems are very still very unhappy with um the treatment of DeFi and DeFi frontends and the regulatory burden put on DeFi frontends for you know whether or not they need to do AML K uh KYC and to what extent do they need to do that and how do they need to charge fees how are they going to be regulated um and so where expectation is that the Dems are going to vote entirely no right and So you need there to be, you know, almost all of the Republicans to vote to um put, you know, a markup out of committee.

And what we're hearing is that there are a number of Republicans who are potentially um sympathetic to the bank uh plight or the bank concern that, you know, this Genius Act allowed for a carve out of these um you know, rewards or these yield that will hurt community banks. Right. Right. And so what what what we're hearing is there is a potential that um there could be a delay in getting this markup out um or even it could happen not at all if the banking lobby is able to get enough Republicans on their side related to this specific point because then what came happened yesterday is that there um I think it was Tim Scott or maybe it was somebody else that came out maybe it was a Lumis who said there's no way that we're changing genius in this um in in in this you know kind of markup and so you now have this kind of standoff which is like okay do we change genius and do we get clarity act or do we not change genius and do we not get clarity and that is kind of the current state of play and we'll see who puts first.

Yeah, it's look I I read the American Bankers Association letter too and there was kind of these three main points, right? It's the community banks rely on the deposits. It's the um the the prohibition on yield is being skirted basically like there are workarounds and um there are I think they said like six trillion in bank deposits that are now at risk. I think the one that is so compelling and wins hearts and minds is the community banks, right? because they rely on the on deposits which then fund lending for communities for homes and small businesses and your farmers and students and stuff like that. And so uh if you are a senator or you know someone who doesn't really know too much about this stuff um and I mean I'll be honest like they they stable coins probably do hurt community banks, right? I don't think it I don't think it hurts the homes and small businesses and farms and students. I think the loans still go to them is probably what they're missing. But yeah, it does disrupt a lot of banking and um but I think it's a I I do think it's a compel I worry that it's a actually quite a compelling argument there.

There was a you know when Genius was going through um uh through Congress uh I had a house rep in our office who wanted to come talk uh to me about this basically what we cared about in Genius and what we cared about was stable coins more broadly. This was obviously one of the biggest topics of conversation and you know one of the things he said to me is like don't you think this is going to challenge the community banks and what do you think about could there be deposit flight and I told him I was like I do think it is competition and challenge to the community banks but that's a good thing right right now we have an industry that has essentially built bad consumer product that is only exists today because of the regulatory mode, right? Like the these banks have not competed on product. They've not competed on they haven't been able to digitize. They haven't been able to offer better rates because of the fact that they are have had this regulatory mode and they haven't competed in a way in a free market in a long time, right? And so we're starting to see, you know, the push of digitization around stable coins kind of bring up this idea that maybe they need to be better

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