I’ve spent my whole life in Chatham County. For over 20 years, I raised chickens, and now I tend cattle on those same rolling hills. Like most folks around here, I take pride in hard work, family and the values that connect us to the land.
North Carolina has over 74,000 farmers, and together we generate more than $103 billion in economic impact. Agriculture supports more than 736,000 jobs across the state. But what keeps the whole system running isn’t just the weather or commodity prices; it’s credit. Access to affordable financing is the lifeblood of rural communities, and that credit often begins at our local community banks.
Unlike Wall Street lenders, community banks know us by name. They’re built on local knowledge, which can’t be automated or outsourced to an app. When a farmer needs to buy feed or replace machinery, the community bank down the street looks beyond the numbers on a page. They understand our land, our history and our word. That’s what keeps family farms alive.
But a quiet storm is brewing in Washington that could shake that foundation. Congress recently passed the GENIUS Act, which brought cryptocurrency, including stablecoin, into the financial mainstream. Lawmakers wisely prohibited stablecoin issuers from paying interest, aiming to keep them separate from traditional deposits that fuel lending in the real economy. The idea was to allow innovation without draining the local deposits that banks use to make loans.
Unfortunately, that line is already being crossed. Some digital-asset companies are skirting the rules by offering “rewards” that mimic yield or interest. Call it what you want, but interest by another name is still interest. And the danger is real. Treasury estimates show that, even without these gimmicks, stablecoins could reduce small-bank deposits by 6.4%, resulting in $19 billion less in small-business loans and $10.6 billion less in farm lending. If stablecoins begin paying full yields, the hit could be catastrophic — up to $62 billion less in agricultural loans nationwide.
That’s not some abstract number on a balance sheet. That’s fewer young farmers getting started. That’s equipment left unrepaired and fields left empty. That’s a loss of opportunity for the rural backbone of America.
We can’t let Wall Street disguise speculation as “innovation” while siphoning deposits from the banks that actually serve us. Congress must close the loopholes in the GENIUS Act and make it crystal clear: if a company acts like a bank, it should play by the same rules. Our farms, our businesses, and our communities depend on it.
I’ve seen plenty of change over my lifetime, and not all of it bad. But if we allow Washington to stand by while digital currencies drain the lifeblood from rural credit, we’ll pay for it in lost farms, lost jobs, and lost communities. Let’s make sure the next generation of North Carolina farmers has the same chance to build a life on the land that we did.
Danny Gaines is a lifelong Chatham County resident who spent more than 20 years as a chicken farmer and continues to raise cattle today. He is a proud Farm Bureau member who has dedicated his life to agriculture and his local community.
