May 14th is the day marked for the vote on the Clear Bill. Now lobbying efforts from all sides have reached a fever pitch. The banking coalition is also launching a frantic counterattack, trying to “steal the house.”
Within the past day, the American Bankers Association sent an emergency mobilization notice to bank executives across the United States, urging them to contact members of the Senate Banking Committee immediately. They also consecutively submitted two technical amendment recommendations. The core demand is to completely close off Section 404—namely, the provision on rewards for stablecoin activities.
The probability of the bill passing on Polymarket has fallen from 80% to 62%, and last night the U.S. stock CRCL plunged hard. This shows that the market truly fears the banking coalition’s final counterattack—this kind of uncertainty is what keeps pulling the CRCL price back and forth. This sense of reverence indicates that the market’s main players know full well that in Washington, logic has never mattered; what matters is the density of lobbying funding.
According to the current draft text and the “wind direction” behind the scenes, there are three possibilities: 1) Maintain the status quo (probability 40%). It clearly prohibits paying interest solely due to holding, and exempts activity rewards based on transactions, liquidity, and staking. In the current version, this is the bottom line for Coinb and Circle. 2) Fine-tune the standards (probability 40%). To calm the banking coalition’s counterattack, they may add a revision clause to reassure the banking coalition. For example, adding compliance-related review requirements—requiring Circle and Coinb to be reviewed on a schedule to show that their activity rewards are not distributed on time or in fixed amounts—proving they are not interest or a variant of interest. This modification would not cancel the rewards, but would increase compliance costs. Even though it adds another set of shackles, it at least preserves the foundation of commercial logic.
3) Thoroughly gut it (probability 20%). A low-probability scenario, but what’s most worrying is exactly this one. The fear is that the banking coalition could team up with far-right lawmakers to carry out a surprise raid—after all, consensus across party lines on a bill is not necessarily unbreakable.
For CRCL investors, of course option 1 is best, and option 2 is also acceptable. If the low-probability scenario really happens, the impact on CRCL would be catastrophic. The fluctuations in the bill’s passing probability on Polymarket also show that, although it is unlikely, there is still a possibility.
The reason the banking coalition is counterattacking is that they fear CRCL forming a new financial infrastructure package of USDC + legal identity + a payment network. They want to use this kind of collusion-by-design tactic to force CRCL into a pure wallet that has no interest and cannot give out rewards—thereby maintaining the bank coalition’s absolute monopoly over cheap capital.
After grinding through the process in the Senate for so long, if today it passes smoothly, it will be more enforceable and more long-lasting than the version from the House. That means it receives approval from the United States’ traditional financial power—meaning the old-money establishment. If the banking coalition “steals the house,” it would mean the collapse of the valuation logic: CRCL would degrade from an internet-based new financial ecosystem into a traditional remittance tool under strict regulation.
The big drama is about to begin—this is a zero-sum game over power between new money seizing control and old money guarding the fortress.

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