The United States has implemented a significant regulatory shift for stablecoins through the GENIUS Act, passed in 2025 and signed into law by President Donald Trump in July of that year. The core provision of this legislation is the prohibition of paying direct interest or yield to stablecoin holders. The stated rationale is to prevent these digital assets from directly competing with traditional bank deposits, under the hypothesis that a drain of liquidity toward stablecoins could restrict the financial system's capacity to extend loans.
A recent report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) has provided quantitative analysis that questions the magnitude of this feared impact. The CEA's findings indicate that, even in scenarios where stablecoins offer competitive yields, the effect on U.S. bank credit is limited. According to its baseline calibration, eliminating stablecoin yield would result in an increase in bank lending of approximately $2.1 billion, which represents just 0.02% of total U.S. financial system credit. Conversely, this regulatory action would imply a welfare loss for stablecoin users estimated at $800 million, suggesting the economic cost to users outweighs the marginal benefit to the banking system.
The report clarifies that approximately 88% of the reserves backing major stablecoins remain invested in liquid, safe instruments like U.S. Treasury bills, meaning only about 12% of funds are outside the traditional financial intermediation circuit. This challenges the narrative of a major liquidity drain.
The geographic disconnect in stablecoin usage is a critical factor. Industry data shows that more than 80% of stablecoin transaction volume occurs outside U.S. borders. In Latin America, adoption is driven by fundamentally different needs: access to the U.S. dollar, capital preservation against high inflation and local currency devaluation, and cheaper cross-border payments—not yield chasing. For users in the region, stablecoins function as essential payment infrastructure and a hedge, not a savings account substitute.
This reality poses a challenge for Latin American regulators: whether to replicate the U.S.'s yield prohibition or develop a region-specific framework. El Salvador has taken a distinct path with its Digital Assets Issuance Law, establishing a regulatory framework for digital assets without imposing direct restrictions on yields, instead focusing on registration, custody, and reserve requirements. Larger economies like Brazil and Mexico are exploring regulatory sandboxes to gather local empirical data before enacting definitive laws.
Meanwhile, the implementation of the GENIUS Act in the U.S. faces procedural delays. The American Bankers Association (ABA) has formally requested a 60-day extension from the Treasury, FDIC, and FinCEN to submit comments on the forthcoming regulations. The ABA argues that regulations proposed by the FDIC and Treasury depend on the final criteria from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and without that framework, a coherent technical response is impossible. This requested delay, amid ongoing political tension and debate over digital asset yields, could push the effective implementation of the GENIUS Act toward the end of 2026.
