A big earthquake in the stablecoin industry! The CLARITY draft was exposed, Circle's stock price evaporated 20% overnight, will the 78 billion USDC business be "one size fits all"?

Original author：AI悟空说

Original source：https://www.youtube.com/embed/4neIcSjX6Ec

On March 24, 2026, the stablecoin industry ushered in an unprecedented earthquake. Circle Internet Group, known as the "compliance top student", plunged more than 20% in the US stock market during the session, and its close partner Coinbase's stock price also plummeted nearly 10%. The trigger for this plunge was not a technical glitch or a hacker attack, but a draft legislation leaked from Capitol Hill in Washington—the latest amendments to the Senate’s Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY Act). The core provisions in the draft explicitly prohibit any platform from providing any form of income for passively holding stablecoins, directly or indirectly. This means that the business model on which Circle relies for survival - using the US dollar reserves deposited by users to purchase US Treasury bonds to obtain interest, and feeding part of the proceeds back to users in the form of "rewards" through platforms such as Coinbase - instantly fell into legal deadlock. This "holding is to earn interest" model was completely blocked, causing USDC to be forcibly reduced from an "all-purpose asset" with both trading medium and value storage functions to a pure payment tool, and its imagination space for capital accumulation was cut off with a single blow. Behind this seemingly sudden regulatory storm is actually the precise strangulation of new crypto forces by traditional Wall Street banking groups. Traditional financial capital, represented by the American Bankers Association, has long been lobbying Congress to close the loopholes in stablecoin interest payments. Because if technology platforms can provide 3.5% risk-free returns, it will directly threaten the foundation of bank deposits and shake the traditional financial system. The essence of this bill is an ultimate battle for the right to distribute U.S. dollar liquidity. At the same time, Circle’s competitor Tether released heavy news on the day of the plunge, announcing that it would hire the Big Four accounting firms to conduct a formal audit of all USDT reserves, with the intention of eliminating the core gap in compliance and transparency with USDC. This "kill you while you are sick" operation further aggravated the panic in the market and made Circle suffer from enemies from all sides. From an investor's perspective, Circle's plunge revealed the cruel truth that "compliance is a double-edged sword." What was once a compliance moat has become a shackles under the sharp edge of regulation, leaving companies completely exposed to the range of legislators. Although the bill is still in the draft stage, and there may be variables in the future game on Capitol Hill due to mid-term elections or interest group tug-of-war, the "golden age" of the stablecoin industry has come to an end. The future industry structure will no longer be a duopoly of USDC and USDT, but will evolve into a multi-party melee between traditional payment giants, emerging technology companies and sovereign digital currencies. For blockchain users, this incident provides a profound lesson: no crypto asset is an absolutely safe "safe haven". What really needs to be focused on is not the short-term flow of funds, but the underlying logic of the power game between Washington and Wall Street.