US President Donald Trump said bankers are trying to undermine the GENIUS Act – the signature stablecoin legislation he signed into law last year – in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, and he called for Congress to pass crypto market structure legislation without interference.
“The US needs to get the market structure done, ASAP. Americans should get more bang for their buck,” he said in the post. “The banks are hitting record profits and we will not allow them to undermine our powerful Crypto agenda that will end up going to China and other countries if we don’t get The Clarity Act done.”
He warned banks against holding the Clarity Act hostage in his post, saying the bill was necessary to keep the crypto industry in the US
“They need to make a good deal with the crypto industry because it’s in the best interest of the American people,” he said.
The market structure bill has been in limbo since the Senate Banking Committee indefinitely postponed a markup hearing in which lawmakers were set to debate and vote on amendments to the bill in January. There are a number of issues still holding up passage of the bill, but the most public battle has been between the banking and crypto sectors over whether third parties can offer returns on stablecoin deposits to customers.
Banks are concerned that allowing Coinbase and other exchanges to offer stablecoin dividends to customers could lead to deposit flight from the banking sector. Crypto companies argue that people should be allowed to earn returns on their holdings, a practice they say was allowed in the GENIUS Act.
The White House has facilitated meetings between banking and crypto industry representatives to negotiate the bill’s language. People familiar with the negotiations say draft language is circulating among lawmakers.
While the White House had set a tentative deadline of the end of February to get a deal together, one has yet to emerge. The Senate still has time to work on the bill, but the calendar is starting to shrink. Lawmakers are on recess over the summer, and the 2026 election cycle is starting to kick into full gear, which will take up time they could otherwise dedicate to the bill.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a federal banking regulator, said in a proposed rule last week that the terms of contracts between stablecoin issuers and their third-party partners must be clear about what those third parties are offering, but the agency did not explicitly ban dividend payouts.
World Liberty Financial, a company associated with Trump and his family, offers its own stablecoin, USD1, and it recently sought to secure a trust charter under the OCC for an associated firm.
The Clarity Act announcement was an abrupt plunge into fiscal policy after Trump spent the past few days overseeing US military strikes against Iran in what the US government has described as a “special combat operation”. The new hostilities have disrupted air travel throughout the Middle East, as well as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Read more: Bitcoin stuck in a rut, but JPMorgan says new legislation could be the ultimate spark
UPDATE (3 March 2026, 20:25 UTC): Adds additional details.
