🔥 Circle -15% USDC issuer. Banks pushed through CLARITY Act. USDC/USDT stablecoins cannot earn interest on holdings (staking, APY). Because if approved, they're afraid all the money will drain out of banks.

The new version of CLARITY directly prohibits earning income just by holding stablecoins: any interest or "cashback" tied to account balances will be illegal. Rewards are only allowed for active actions (liquidity provision, network participation, etc.), but not simply for having USDC/USDT sitting there.

Official reason — "don't turn stablecoins into analogs of bank deposits." Unofficial reason — aggressive lobbying by banks that fear income-generating stablecoins will suck trillions of deposits out of the system.

P.S. Can't say this is bad for crypto, it actually would've been better if they'd approved it with yields, and banks issued their own stables and competed honestly. Bad for Trump and the US though — no profits from APY, no massive demand for stables, no demand = no purchases of treasuries (US government debt).