US crypto advocates cite competition with China's interest-bearing e-CNY to push for stablecoin yield clarity, but banks' opposition stalls the Clarity Act. Experts say the two largest economies are pursuing very different digital money strategies.
US crypto advocates have increasingly pointed to competition with China’s new interest-bearing e-CNY to demand legislative clarity on stablecoin yields, but this clashes with banks, slowing US legislation including the Clarity Act. China is charting a completely different course for the future of digital money, experts said. “The world’s two largest economies are not so much competing in digital assets as they are pursuing very different strategies,” said Andrew Fei, a partner at law firm King & Wood Mallesons in Hong Kong. Winston Ma, adjunct professor and executive director of the Global Public Investment Funds Forum at the New York University School of Law, described the US-China competition in digital assets as intense but “asymmetrical”. “At this stage, Beijing is deliberately choosing a different digital-money model from Washington: China is putting the sovereign e-CNY at the centre of its architecture, while the US is effectively letting privately issued dollar stablecoins lead the way,” Ma said. Banks argue that stablecoin yields would attract deposits away and reduce their ability to lend to the real economy, while crypto firms say that allowing rewards on holding stablecoins would promote digital asset innovation.
