Congress returns from Easter recess on April 13 with one of crypto's most consequential legislative fights still unresolved: whether platforms can offer rewards on stablecoin holdings. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY Act), a sweeping crypto market structure bill, is the vehicle for that decision, and a Senate Banking Committee markup is now targeted for late April. The outcome will affect not just US exchanges but more than 500 million stablecoin users globally, concentrated across South Asia and Africa, who depend on dollar-pegged tokens for savings and remittances.

Where Negotiations Stand

The CLARITY Act builds directly on the GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, which established one-to-one reserve requirements for stablecoin issuers but left a gap around affiliate or third-party yield arrangements that the new bill is meant to close. That gap is now the central point of contention.

The compromise currently on the table, shaped largely by Senators Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), draws a line between two types of rewards. Passive yield, meaning interest paid simply for holding a stablecoin balance, would be prohibited. Activity-based rewards tied to staking, liquidity provision, transaction activity, or posting collateral would be permitted. Bill text was expected in early April but was delayed; industry representatives who reviewed the revised draft, as reported by CoinDesk on April 2, 2026, described remaining changes as mostly technical rather than substantive. The 48-hour publication requirement before any markup hearing means the clock is tight once Congress is back in session.

Coinbase, the largest US crypto exchange, has drawn a hard line. CEO Brian Armstrong has warned that Coinbase could not support the bill if its final language went beyond enhanced disclosure requirements, and separately raised concerns about provisions that would, in his characterisation, kill rewards on stablecoins. That position carries financial weight: Coinbase reported $1.348 billion in stablecoin revenue in 2025, about 19.6% of its total, with an all-time high average of $17.8 billion in USDC held on the platform. The company's fourth quarter alone produced a record $364.1 million in stablecoin revenue. Stripe has also emerged as a prominent opponent of yield restrictions, joining Coinbase in leading the crypto industry's push against a blanket prohibition.

The Banking Industry vs. the White House

Banks have framed the yield question as a systemic risk issue. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan warned at a January earnings call that interest-bearing stablecoins could attract as much as $6 trillion from US bank deposits, roughly 30 to 35 percent of total commercial deposits, into stablecoin products. Trade groups including the American Bankers Association have pushed for a full ban on passive yield to prevent deposit migration.

A White House Council of Economic Advisers study released April 8 pushed back sharply on that argument. Analysts found that a yield ban would generate only $2.1 billion in additional bank lending, a 0.02 percent increase, at a net welfare cost to consumers of $800 million. That works out to a cost-benefit ratio of roughly 6.6 to 1 against consumers, a figure the study's authors used to frame the tradeoff as heavily skewed toward large financial institutions at ordinary savers' expense. The study described the tradeoff bluntly: "A yield prohibition would do very little to protect bank lending, while forgoing the consumer benefits of competitive returns on stablecoin holdings." About 76 percent of any additional lending from a ban would flow to large banks, with community banks receiving approximately $500 million of the benefit.

What the On-Chain Data Shows

Total stablecoin market capitalization sits near $312 billion as of April 2026. USDC has reached a record high market cap of approximately $80 billion and now accounts for 64 percent of stablecoin transaction volume, surpassing USDT on that metric for the first time in roughly a decade. USDT retains a larger market cap at about $113 billion and processes around $63.4 billion in daily trading volume. Tether alone counts more than 500 million users globally.

Why South Asia and Africa Are Watching

The rewards debate is often covered as a US banking story. For users in emerging markets, the stakes are more immediate. Sub-Saharan Africa received more than $205 billion in on-chain value between July 2024 and June 2025, a 52 percent year-over-year increase. Stablecoin adoption in the region grew more than 180 percent in the same period, driven by currency volatility, inflation hedging, and remittances. Stablecoins now account for roughly 43 percent of the region's total crypto transaction volume, with platforms like Bitnob, Paxful, and Chipper Cash widely used across Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. Nigeria and Ethiopia both ranked in the top 15 of the 2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index, and Sub-Saharan Africa placed four countries in the top 20 in 2026, reflecting the region's expanding centrality to global crypto adoption.

In South and Southeast Asia, India tops the 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index. Workers in India, Pakistan, and the Philippines increasingly receive remittances through stablecoin rails routed via platforms in Dubai, often at lower cost and faster speed than traditional wire transfers. For many users, yield-bearing stablecoin products are a way to earn returns on dollar savings while local currencies depreciate. The CLARITY Act's treatment of decentralized finance provisions also carries particular significance for the region: Indian developers rank among the most active DeFi contributors globally, and the bill's approach to decentralized protocols will directly shape how those communities operate within any US-influenced regulatory framework.

Regulatory signalling also matters beyond US borders. Kenya passed digital asset legislation in October 2025. Nigeria's securities regulator has proposed a formal framework. Several African jurisdictions are modelling their rules partly on US precedent. How Washington resolves the yield question is likely to shape how these regulators treat stablecoin reward products at home.

What Comes Next

Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) said in mid-March that she believed a deal was within reach, telling reporters simply, "We think we've got it." The late April markup window is the first real test of whether that confidence was warranted. If the CLARITY Act clears committee, its full Senate floor consideration would follow, with the yield compromise either intact or reopened by industry pressure. The question of affiliate or third-party yield arrangements, left unresolved by the GENIUS Act and now squarely in the CLARITY Act's sights, has become among the most contested provisions in the current legislative session. How that dispute is resolved will determine whether stablecoin rewards survive in any meaningful form under US law.