When Congress passed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act and President Donald Trump signed it into law, Washington achieved something increasingly rare: genuine bipartisan agreement on complex financial policy. After months of negotiation and risk assessment, lawmakers produced a framework designed to protect consumers while strengthening the global role of the U.S. dollar.
That vote recognized a simple reality: dollar-backed stablecoins are no longer theoretical. They are already reshaping payments, settlement and global commerce. But passing GENIUS was not the end of the story. It was the starting point. Now, just as regulators begin the work of implementation, legacy financial interests in the traditional bank lobby are urging Congress to reopen settled provisions through unrelated market structure legislation. Their target is stablecoin rewards, and the consequences of getting this wrong extend far beyond Washington.
North Carolina lawmakers and citizens should be paying close attention. A global race is underway. China recently announced plans to pay interest on its digital yuan in order to compel adoption. That decision is not about consumer convenience. It is about shaping the future rails of global settlement and weakening the dollar’s central role in international commerce.
America has chosen a different path. Rather than adopting a government-issued central bank digital currency, or CBDC, Congress passed the GENIUS Act to ensure that U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins, issued by private companies under American rules, become the primary settlement instruments of the future. That difference is fundamental. One model concentrates monetary power in the state. The other relies on competition, transparency and the rule of law.
North Carolina confronted this question before Washington did and chose early and wisely. In 2024, the General Assembly enacted a prohibition on CBDCs, overriding a stunning veto from then-Gov. Roy Cooper. Lawmakers concluded that government-issued digital money posed unnecessary risks to privacy and financial autonomy. Instead, the state rejected state-controlled, programmable money and affirmed a preference for market-driven financial innovation grounded in individual choice.
GENIUS reflects that same philosophy at the federal level. It establishes strict guardrails for payment stablecoins, requiring high-quality reserves and oversight. At the insistence of banks, Congress went further, explicitly prohibiting stablecoin issuers from paying interest. That was a significant concession. Yet Congress intentionally preserved the ability of third-party platforms, such as exchanges and fintechs, to offer optional rewards to users. This reflects a basic principle of competitive markets: Consumers should be free to choose how they store and use money.
Regulators were deliberately tasked with resolving technical questions through rulemaking. Yet some now want Congress to short-circuit that process by banning third-party rewards outright. The argument often offered is that stablecoins should be treated like credit cards, with rewards permitted only at the point of sale. That analogy fails. Stablecoins are debit instruments, not credit products, and their economics are driven by assets under management, not swipe fees.
Restricting rewards to retail transactions would effectively impose a holding tax on Americans who use digital dollars. Under GENIUS as written, a platform may choose to share revenue with users. Under a transaction-only model, users receive nothing unless they spend. That is not consumer protection. It is a government-mandated windfall for intermediaries.
The opposition from large banks is not a mystery. U.S. banks earn roughly $176 billion per year on the trillions of dollars they hold at the Federal Reserve. They earn another $187 billion annually from card swipe fees, which totals more than $1,400 per household. Stablecoin rewards threaten those margins not by reducing lending, but by introducing real competition into payments.
As the Senate Banking Committee considers the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, the risk is clear. If Congress weakens dollar-based stablecoins by banning rewards to protect legacy revenue, it hands foreign central bank digital currencies a competitive advantage just as global settlement moves onchain.
The GENIUS Act was a rare bipartisan achievement, supported by North Carolina lawmakers who understood the stakes early. To honor that work, Congress should allow the law to be implemented as written.
That is how North Carolina and the nation ensure the U.S. dollar remains unrivaled in the next era of global commerce.
Daniel Spuller is executive vice president of industry affairs at Blockchain Association.
