Digital Sovereignty Alliance: Where stablecoin policy goes after GENIUS

For US stablecoin payments and treasury companies, workable rules still leave a question: how long will they last? Congress can write requirements into statute, while agencies can rewrite their rules after an election. That uncertainty matters to companies seeking capital and strategic partners. Adrian Wall, Managing Director at Digital Sovereignty Alliance, joined Paula Pettit on Range Stablecoin Fireside to explain the stablecoin yield compromise, his expectations for the CLARITY Act and why central banks abroad are watching Washington. The episode was recorded ahead of its October 2026 broadcast. His predictions about CLARITY reflect his outlook at the time of recording.

Digital Sovereignty Alliance is a Washington, DC nonprofit working on crypto policy, education and advocacy. Range works with companies operating under those rules. We translate their regulatory and reporting requirements into transaction controls, orchestrate the risk and compliance providers they already use, and run monitoring, reconciliation and reporting from one record across stablecoins and fiat.

How the stablecoin yield compromise came together

Adrian traced the industry's confidence back to the GENIUS Act. Banking colleagues had told him it would never pass within a year. When it did, the industry carried that momentum into market structure legislation. CLARITY proved more complicated.

Stablecoin yield was the first major obstacle. In Adrian's account, banks argued that yield on stablecoins threatened their deposits. He disagreed: "I don't think stablecoin yield is a direct threat to deposits". He went on record against yield anyway. He said he wrote an op-ed with a message to the industry: "let's extend an olive branch to the banking industry. Let's get rid of yield on stablecoin". His reasoning started with stablecoins' original purpose. In his words, "Stablecoins were invented as a hedge against volatility in crypto trading", with remittances and DeFi transactions emerging later. In his view, stablecoins were never intended to be yield-bearing instruments. Giving up yield offered a way to improve relations with banks after an adversarial stretch.

Adrian said a bipartisan pair of senators then presented a compromise that the banks accepted. As Adrian described its terms, "idle stablecoins were not allowed to generate yield. Transactional could, and the banks were cool with that."

For products that pay stablecoin rewards, that distinction is worth recording: which rewards attach to idle balances, and which attach to transactions? Keeping that record lets you show where each payment falls under whichever yield rule applies.

Where CLARITY stood when the episode was recorded

After yield, Adrian said, attention shifted to ethics and developer protections. In his account, the ethics provisions governed how elected officials could profit from crypto, and Democrats also wanted them to cover the president. The developer protections came through the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act provision, which Adrian said DSA worked on with a Senate office. Ethics, he said, was where the bill got stuck. Adrian said Republicans and Democrats sent negotiated text to the White House and received no feedback.

That silence led him to conclude that regulators were preparing for CLARITY not to pass. He pointed to the SEC and CFTC's Project Crypto rules, which he described as broadly similar to the framework CLARITY would have established. The difference, as he put it: "It's just not gonna be statutory. It's not law." At the time of recording, his best case was passage in September, but he predicted CLARITY would not pass in the fall and the industry would operate under Project Crypto instead. His outlook also depended on the midterms. If Democrats won the Senate, he put the chance of the next Congress taking up CLARITY at zero because of who would lead the banking committee. If Republicans held the Senate and Democrats won the House, he saw a small but better chance. Democrats, he said, wanted to show the industry they were not its enemy after making its life difficult under the previous administration.

Adrian ended the episode with a warning about how the fight would be covered: "do not be fooled by what you read in the media. This is a complicated issue." He credited people in the White House, on both sides of the aisle and across industry with working hard on the bill, and said "the digital asset industry is not meant to be partisan."

For operators, the distinction is between political coverage and adopted requirements. Headlines can signal timing; obligations change through the text Congress or an agency adopts.

What two years under agency rules would mean for operators

Paula asked what the outcome would change for companies already operating. Adrian's answer was that "the good news is that not much will change". Under the current SEC and CFTC leadership, he expected conditions to hold or improve as agencies adopted some of CLARITY's provisions through rules. A change of administration could reopen the question.

He expected companies to accept that uncertainty. Two more years would give the industry time to build adoption and become harder to ignore when the politics shifted. He considered that a reasonable strategy.

Capital was his bigger concern. Small and medium-sized companies need financing and strategic partners to grow, and inconsistent rules make both harder to secure. As Adrian put it, "Investors are going to be afraid to put in millions or hundreds of millions of dollars if they know that the rules can change in two years."

Keep a dated history of the policies applied to transactions. If agency rules change, that history lets an examiner, auditor or investor see which rule applied to each transaction.

Adrian's clean slate proposal for past token transactions

As Adrian framed it, CLARITY was designed to set the rules for future activity. Adrian's question to legislators is "how do we responsibly address what happened yesterday when those rules did not exist?" Companies, developers and token holders spent years operating amid regulatory ambiguity. Leaving good-faith historical transactions exposed to litigation would, in his view, solve only half the problem. Adrian summed it up: "We've made it okay for the future, but we haven't taken care of the people who are currently going through, you know, civil litigation."

His concern centers on secondary market token transactions. As Adrian described the draft, CLARITY gives issuers a process to come into compliance, but some tokens no longer have an issuer able to begin it. A DAO may lack centralized governance. An issuer may have dissolved while its tokens continue to circulate. The draft, he said, would let holders with enough tokens start the process together. Adrian doubted that hundreds or thousands of holders could agree on a path when ten friends struggle to agree on a lunch date. Tokens can also lie dormant for years before someone develops a use for them and interest returns. Without a clean slate, he said, holders face potential litigation they did nothing to cause.

His precedent came from private equity. In his telling, the replacement of LIBOR with SOFR left credit contracts in dispute. By his account, lenders, borrowers and acquirers sued each other until Congress passed the LIBOR Act, which automatically switched historical contracts that referenced LIBOR to SOFR. The litigation then went away, he said, and he argued that earlier action would have saved more. Adrian said DSA had put clean slate language in front of Senate offices on both sides, and that by and large they had been supportive. He was optimistic, though whether it would make the final bill was still open while ethics and the developer protections took priority.

For companies holding or handling tokens acquired before rules existed, acquisition records and counterparty history remain useful with or without a clean slate provision.

Why Nigeria's central bank is watching Washington

Adrian said DSA works primarily in the US, but that central banks and monetary authorities abroad have approached it to understand Washington's plans for market structure and stablecoins. He noted that Singapore and parts of the Middle East already have well-developed frameworks. Because payment stablecoins are backed by US dollars, he said, other countries still want to see what the US does. Nigeria illustrates that interest. Adrian put its population at about 250 million and estimated annual transactions in Tether's USDT alone at more than $30 billion. He said Circle and PayPal are also present. A naira-backed stablecoin exists but, by his account, has gained little traction.

Adrian said DSA has engaged directly with the Central Bank of Nigeria, whose biggest concern, in his account, is writing rules that protect the naira while allowing innovation and transactions in dollar-backed stablecoins. He described a sandbox where issuers would work closely with the central bank under tight regulation for a year or two. Direct access to the people running those businesses would let the central bank monitor activity in real time and intervene early if an issuer showed signs of liquidity pressure. Reserve requirements would begin conservatively. In Adrian's example, an issuer might keep most naira reserves in the country and hold a share, perhaps 20%, in US dollar Treasuries. Limits could loosen if the arrangement worked.

Adrian acknowledged the risks of scams and complex products for retail users, but argued that outsiders underestimate those users' sophistication. In Adrian's words, "For them, it's existential. They've been using it in ways that Americans do not." People earning in volatile currencies, with limited access to bank storage, have clear reasons to hold stablecoins. He pointed to Argentina, where savings could, in an extreme case, lose half their value overnight.

If you run payment corridors into a market regulated this way, plan for continuous reporting. Expect the central bank to want real-time visibility. Keep transaction activity, issuer liquidity and reserve location reportable, with controls that can change as the central bank adjusts its limits.

Controls that keep pace with changing stablecoin rules

Range starts with each regulator's requirements, translates them into controls applied before money moves, and orchestrates the risk and compliance providers you already use. Monitoring, reconciliation and reporting run on one record across stablecoins and fiat. Every decision carries an audit trail, so evidence is ready when an examiner, auditor or investor asks.

If you are building stablecoin products under rules that are still settling, talk to us: Request a sandbox

About Digital Sovereignty Alliance

Digital Sovereignty Alliance (DSA) describes itself as a nonprofit social welfare organization that advocates for public policies supporting ethical innovation in decentralized technologies, blockchain, cryptocurrency, Web3 and artificial intelligence. Based in Washington, DC, its work spans engagement with federal lawmakers on legislation covering market structure, stablecoins and digital assets, and public education, including a financial literacy series. Learn more at discoverdsa.org.

Want to appear on Range Stablecoin Fireside? If you are building with stablecoins and want a seat on the show, get in touch by email or on X.