OpinionBy Faryar Shirzad|Edited by Cheyenne Ligon8 min agoRob Nichols says the American Bankers Association wants to strengthen the Clarity Act, not kill it, and that the fix is a handful of word changes in a 600-page bill. I take him at his word on intent. But the changes are not small, and the premise behind them has been tested against seven years of data and did not survive.The ABA's case rests on a prediction: let platforms pay stablecoin rewards and deposits will drain out of community banks, taking local lending with them. That has been testable for years, because current law already permits these rewards, and Coinbase has paid them on USDC for more than four years. If the mechanism worked as the ABA describes, the damage would be visible.It isn't. Community bank deposits grew 26 percent, roughly $482 billion, from June 2019 through March 2026, straight through the entire rise of stablecoins and stablecoin rewards.Faryar Shirzad is chief policy officer at Coinbase.The empirical evidence points one directionEmpirical studies from Charles River Associates and the Council of Economic Advisors also show no significant relationship between stablecoins and deposits. Rob calls the absence of deposit flight since GENIUS "irrelevant" because regulators haven't finished their rules. That asks Congress to legislate against a future harm no one can measure while ignoring the record we’ve already spent years with. Money market funds, Treasury bills, and brokered CDs have out-yielded checking accounts for years without emptying them.Banks understand exactly what rewards doConsumers earned nearly $50 billion in credit card rewards last year, and more than 90 percent of general-purpose card spending runs on cards that offer them. The banking industry built that. Rewards are how you get consumers to adopt a product and then use it.Rob says plenty of reward programs would survive his suggested language, just not ones that mimic interest. But credit cards are principally a retail payments product, so transaction-based rewards fit them naturally. Stablecoins do far more: they move payments, settle trades, post collateral, and serve as the cash leg of the onchain economy, and in much of that activity holding a balance is integral to what is being rewarded. Forcing stablecoin incentives into the card template is not neutrality, it is a constraint on a competitor just as onchain finance proves itself.The word changes are not technicalThe current text is not loose drafting. Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks negotiated it over months with the banks at the table, and every phrase the ABA wants to revisit was settled there. It draws a deliberate line: a return for leaving money idle is prohibited, compensation for genuine activity is not.The ABA's edits would move that line, widening the prohibition past deposit substitutes into ordinary stablecoin use mechanics and leaving regulators and litigants to sort out whether a routine merchant rebate is really bank interest. Reopening a negotiated compromise this late, in language broader than the goal requires, is not a technical correction. Let’s take the compromise.Clarity is a win for everyoneClarity gives banks the broadest new statutory powers since Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 1999: custody, staking, lending, payments, clearing, and market-making. Community banks gain the most, because shared blockchain rails let a $500 million institution compete on the same terms, including on global payments, as a $3 trillion one, and they will still be the ones underwriting the local restaurant, the row-crop operation, and the first mortgage. And America wins. A regulated dollar that settles in seconds at low cost means American families and small businesses pay less to move money, the Treasury market gains a durable new source of demand, and the dollar, rather than another country's currency or an unregulated offshore token, becomes the default unit of account for the next generation of finance. Banks will build much of that, which is precisely why Congress gave them the authority to do it.Rob and I agree that the United States can be both the banking capital and the crypto capital of the world. We are closer to that than we have ever been. Let's pass Clarity, get to work on the rules together, and keep the dollar at the center of the system we are all about to build.Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates.Latest Crypto News 1Dallas Fed warns tokenized deposits could strip $700 billion from U.S. banks' lending capacity1 hr ago2ECB claims digital euro will offer 'maximum level of privacy' amid surveillance fears1 hr ago3The 3 catalysts that could define bitcoin's next move2 hrs ago4Bitcoin takes a breather after adding 23% in 7 days as ETF demand holds steady2 hrs ago5Strategy cuts net leverage to near zero as cash nearly matches convertible debt2 hrs ago6Euro stablecoins get a mainstream push as Revolut begins rolling out EURR in Europe3 hrs ago7Japan to start stocks and bonds tokenization development plans this year4 hrs ago8Live updates: Bitcoin flat near $78,500 ahead Nvidia earnings4 hrs ago9A massive $6.4 billion bitcoin options expiry on Friday could amplify volatility5 hrs ago10BlackRock cuts bitcoin ETF swap minimum to $1 million: Report7 hrs agoLatest Research Anvil: The Missing Collateral LayerAnvil: The Missing Collateral LayerAnvil is a shared on-chain collateral layer built on a programmable letter of credit: reserve assets as a guarantee -no loan, no interest, keep custody & yield.By CoinDesk ResearchJul 29, 2026Commissioned byAnvilAnvil is a shared on-chain collateral layer built on a programmable letter of credit: reserve assets as a guarantee -no loan, no interest, keep custody & yield.Why it matters:Anvil is a shared on-chain collateral layer built on a programmable letter of credit: reserve assets as a guarantee -no loan, no interest, keep custody & yield.View Full ReportMore From Opinion MiCA revolutionised European crypto, and left Poland licking its woundsPass the Clarity ActThe hard truth is that the Clarity Act is an anti-crypto bill