Crypto sector and community banking should unite as partners in CLARITY Act discussions: Industry Leader
Crypto executive Austin Campbell warns that failing to establish cooperation between community banking institutions and the digital asset industry on the CLARITY Act would ultimately benefit only the "big banks."
An executive in the cryptocurrency space has challenged assertions made by a community banking association president who claimed that reaching any form of compromise with the digital asset sector regarding the US CLARITY Act would represent a critical error.
"If community banks and crypto can't find a way to work together, we already know who the winners are. It's not the community banks. It's not consumers. It's not the crypto industry," Zero Knowledge Consulting founder Austin Campbell said in an X post on Friday.
"It is the big banks," Campbell said.
"There is a very straight line between the value community banks bring," he said, explaining that they face technological and regulatory issues that can be solved by stablecoins.
The major banks "have tricked both sides"
"These are not enemies," Campbell said of stablecoin-yield providers and community banks, adding that "they are allies."
"The big banks and the bank lobbies they fund have tricked both sides into fighting each other so that the ultimate winner is Jamie Dimon's bonus," he said.
Campbell's remarks were delivered as a direct reply to Christopher Williston, the president of the Independent Bankers Association of Texas, who had previously stated that yielding ground during CLARITY Act negotiations could potentially jeopardize community lending operations and regional economic productivity.
"It's simply impossible to roll over in the fight for liquidity that powers the economies of the places we call home," he said.
Advocacy organizations representing banking interests have maintained their position that should the CLARITY Act become law in its present iteration, stablecoins have the potential to drain deposits away from traditional banking infrastructure. Major US bank Standard Chartered recently estimated in a research note that increasing stablecoin adoption could lead to US bank deposits decreasing "by one-third of stablecoin market cap."
The ongoing debate has also attracted commentary from members of the Trump family during the current week.
Eric Trump, the son of US President Donald Trump, said in a X post on Thursday that large banks are not acting in the best interests of US citizens. "Big Banks (think JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc.) are lobbying overtime to block Americans from getting higher yields on their savings."
Donald Trump urges the bill to pass "ASAP"
US President Donald Trump also criticized banks for stalling the Senate's crypto market-structure bill amid ongoing disagreements over stablecoin yield payments.
"The U.S. needs to get Market Structure done, ASAP," Trump said. "The Banks are hitting record profits, and we are not going to allow them to undermine our powerful Crypto Agenda," he added.