Community Banks, Crypto Industry ‘Are Allies’ In CLARITY Act Clash: Exec

A crypto executive has pushed back against claims by the president of a community banking association that any compromise between the banking sector and the crypto industry on the US CLARITY Act would be a mistake.

“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 comments came in response to Independent Bankers Association of Texas president Christopher Williston, who said that making concessions in the CLARITY Act debate would risk harming local lending and economic production.

“It’s simply impossible to roll over in the fight for liquidity that powers the economies of the places we call home,” he said.

Banking lobby groups have argued that if the CLARITY Act passes in its current form, stablecoins could siphon deposits from the banking system. 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 debate has also drawn comments from the Trump family this 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.

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“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.

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