The fight over stablecoin yield is still blocking parts of Washington's crypto agenda. On April 13, the American Bankers Association pushed back on a recent White House Council of Economic Advisers report that argued banning yield on payment stablecoins would do very little to protect bank lending.

What the White House found

The CEA paper modeled the effect of prohibiting stablecoin yield and concluded that such a ban would increase bank lending by only $2.1 billion, or about 0.02%, while imposing an estimated $800 million welfare cost on consumers. It also said community banks would capture only a minority of that benefit, roughly $500 million in extra lending.

Why banks disagree

ABA economists said that framing misses the real policy question. In their view, lawmakers should be modeling what happens if yield-bearing stablecoins are allowed to scale, not what happens if yield is prohibited at today's market size. Their argument is that higher-yielding token products could pull deposits away from banks, especially community lenders, and raise funding costs even if aggregate deposits stay inside the broader financial system.

The dispute matters because stablecoin yield has already delayed movement on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. The conservative takeaway is not that either side has settled the issue. It is that one of the biggest remaining fights in U.S. crypto legislation is now turning on competing economic models, not just industry lobbying.