Introduction
Currency is never static. From metal coinage to paper banknotes, and from savings passbooks to mobile payments, every evolution in the form of currency has been rooted in technological change and institutional restructuring. What we are witnessing today may be the most profound and rapid transformation in this history yet.
According to TAB Global 1000 data, the world’s top 1,000 banks hold over $103 trillion in customer deposits. This scale forms the core liability base of the banking system and supports the stable operation of global credit expansion and financial intermediation. Meanwhile, another curve is rising sharply. As of March 2026, the global stablecoin market capitalization has surpassed $319 billion, and the U.S. Treasury Secretary predicts this figure could reach $3.7 trillion by the end of the decade.
The tension between these two curves constitutes the core question of this report:
When dollar–denominated assets take on an on-chain form and gain the ability to simultaneously provide custody, liquidity, and yield, will the deposit model that traditional banks rely on be repriced?
This question is critical not only because it touches upon the future of the crypto industry, but also because it strikes at the very foundations of banking. For traditional banks, deposits are not a neutral figure; they are the starting point for the operation of the balance sheet. Whoever controls deposits controls the basis for loan expansion, net interest margins, and financial distribution. For crypto platforms, stablecoins offer a new possibility by enabling a lower-friction technological architecture that transmits yields-previously absorbed within the banking system-more directly to end users.
However, this shift by no means implies that traditional banks will simply be replaced. While crypto platforms demonstrate structural advantages in yield, liquidity, and product innovation, they still face significant gaps in regulatory compliance, legal protections, liquidity management, and technical security. We observe both the rapid attraction of capital to stablecoins and yield-bearing products, and the regulatory contest unfolding around the GENIUS Act, the CLARITY Act, Europe’s MiCA framework, and Hong Kong’s stablecoin regulations—rapidly bringing this competition into the mainstream financial policy agenda.
Therefore, this report does not attempt to presuppose the victory of any one side, nor does it reduce this transformation to a binary judgment of “banks will be disrupted” or “crypto is merely a supplementary tool”. A more accurate characterization is this: we are at the starting point of a restructuring of the financial architecture. On one side is the legacy system centered on deposits and banking licenses; on the other is a new system centered on stablecoins, wallets, custody, and on-chain yield protocols. In the coming years, what is truly worth observing is not merely whether stablecoins can continue to grow, but how the relationships among currency, deposits, yield, settlement, and regulation will be redefined.
This report will explore the following questions:
● Why are stablecoins evolving from a payment instrument into a “yield-bearing dollar”?
● Why do they exert marginal competitive pressure on the deposit market?
● What are the fundamental structural differences between emerging crypto banks and traditional banks?
● Where does the yield of the “yield-bearing dollar” come from, and who bears the risks?
● What exactly is regulation constraining, and what is it protecting?
● Will traditional banks be replaced, or will they absorb this innovation and reconstruct themselves?
In this sense, what this report seeks to provide is not a prophecy, but a coordinate map for understanding this financial restructuring.
As the global investment arm of HTX, HTX Ventures has long tracked the evolution of stablecoins, on-chain financial infrastructure, and emerging fintech models, while actively participating in this structural transformation through both investments and incubation.
HTX’s global business footprint in stablecoin trading and yield-generating products also gives us a front-row view into this shift—grounded in real user behavior, capital flows, and product design dynamics.
The perspectives presented in this report are informed not only by HTX Ventures’ long-term coverage of global crypto-financial projects, but also by HTX’s hands-on operational experience across stablecoins and yield-based offerings.
1. From Payment Instrument to “Yield-Bearing Dollar”: What Changes Are Taking Place in the Market
For a long time, traditional financial institutions have relied heavily on massive amounts of low-cost deposits as their core source of funding. By absorbing depositor funds to issue loans, they earn stable interest margin profits through the operation of these capital pools. The latest data from TABInsights, the research arm of The Asian Banker, shows that the world’s 1,000 largest banks hold over $103 trillion in customer deposits.
This seemingly unbreakable model is now facing its most severe challenge in history. The challenger is not another bank, but stablecoins born on the blockchain. The rise of stablecoins has introduced a completely new form of digital currency to the on-chain world. It not only possesses extremely high liquidity and the programmability granted by smart contracts but has also thoroughly broken free from the efficiency constraints of traditional banking legacy systems. Unlike traditional deposits, which are limited by business hours and cross-border clearing nodes, stablecoins run natively on blockchain infrastructure, greatly increasing the turnover rate of capital.
As of March 2026, the global stablecoin market capitalization has exceeded $319 billion and continues to expand at high speed. U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent stated that by 2028, the stablecoin market cap could surpass $2 trillion, and this figure may reach $3.7 trillion by the end of the decade. In terms of total volume, stablecoins are still far from being able to replace the banking system. If one were to conclude that “stablecoins are systematically replacing banks” based solely on absolute volume, such a view would clearly be premature.
However, from the perspectives of functional evolution, capital flows, and user behavior, another trend has already emerged: stablecoins are gradually evolving from a transactional tool into a “yield-bearing USD account” for a broader user base.
In earlier stages, stablecoins primarily served three functions. First, they were settlement assets between and within exchanges. Second, they were a US dollar-denominated medium for on-chain asset trading. Third, they were a “US dollar substitute” in the crypto ecosystem, helping users hold a relatively stable US dollar exposure without needing to exit the crypto network. During this stage, the most important values of stablecoins were payment efficiency and settlement convenience.
But since 2024, this positioning has begun to change significantly. More and more users are no longer just “using stablecoins” but are starting to “hold stablecoins”. Stablecoins are no longer just assets briefly parked during a trade but are gradually becoming part of asset allocation and cash management. Platforms have also begun to design various yield products around stablecoins, shifting them from settlement tools to “yield-bearing USD accounts”.
Behind this transformation are at least two core driving factors.
1.1 Changes in the Macro Interest Rate Environment
In a high interest rate cycle, dollar-denominated assets themselves offer considerable returns. Compliant stablecoin issuers allocate reserves to short-term US Treasuries, reverse repurchases, and other highly liquid cash equivalents, which means the stablecoin system is naturally connected to the US benchmark interest rate. While traditional banks still pay near-zero demand interest to a large number of depositors, platforms and protocols built around stablecoins have the ability to transmit a higher proportion of underlying yields to users with lower friction.
In other words, where stablecoins truly build competitiveness is not just by being “on-chain,” but by making explicit—through technology and product structures—the yields that were originally stagnant within bank balance sheets. For the first time, users can compare more intuitively: while holding the same US dollars, why is the difference in yield between different systems so large?
1.2 Evolution of Product Forms
Another key change comes from product packaging. In the past, obtaining on-chain yields often meant that users had to understand wallets, Gas, protocol interactions, collateralization logic, or risk parameters themselves, which significantly limited the participant base. Today, more and more platforms are beginning to encapsulate complex underlying asset allocations into simple “Yield-Bearing Accounts” or “Wealth Management Portals.” For the average user, the experience is no longer “participating in a DeFi protocol,” but “putting US dollars into an account that can be transferred out at any time and also generates yield.”
This step is critical because it moves stablecoins from tools originally focused on professional and trading scenarios toward the most widespread retail product category in traditional finance: savings and cash management products.
2. Why Stablecoins Are Beginning to Possess “Deposit-Like Attractiveness”
To understand why stablecoins are beginning to form a competitive relationship with bank deposits, one must return to a fundamental question: Why do users put money into banks?
Traditionally, the answer consists of three core elements: security, liquidity, and yield.
● Security means that funds are not easily lost and are protected by clear legal frameworks and deposit insurance in most jurisdictions.
● Liquidity means that funds can be accessed at any time for payments, transfers, and asset allocation.
● Yield means that while depositors relinquish direct control of their funds, they receive a certain interest return in exchange.
In the on-chain financial system, these three elements are being reorganized.
2.1 Changes in Asset Form: From Account Records to Digital Assets
In the traditional banking system, the “balance” a user sees is essentially an entry on a bank’s ledger; this record represents the bank’s liability to the depositor. The depositor owns a claim against the bank rather than direct control over a specific, independent asset.
Stablecoins are different. They exist as on-chain assets that can be stored in exchange platforms, institutional custody accounts, or user-managed self-custody wallets. A stablecoin is not just a record of value, but a digital asset that can be transferred, invoked, combined, and embedded into protocols. In other words, the representation of funds has shifted from an “account” to an “asset.”
This step may seem technical, but its impact is immense. Because once funds exist in the form of programmable assets, they are no longer confined to the ledger of a single institution; instead, they can flow, be priced, and generate yield within a more open network.
2.2 Changes in Liquidity Structure: From Business-Day Settlement to 24/7 Transfer
The liquidity capabilities of the traditional banking system are constrained by business hours, local payment networks, cross-border correspondent banks, and clearing cycles. Even today, with the high popularity of digital banking and mobile payments, many cross-border remittances, corporate settlements, and high-value payments remain subject to working hours, T+1/T+2 clearing, and multi-layered intermediary systems.
In contrast, blockchain networks provide 24/7 real-time settlement capabilities. Stablecoins can complete global transfers within seconds or minutes without waiting for banks to open, clearing nodes to queue, or correspondent banks to confirm.
This means that for an increasing number of users, “liquidity” is no longer just about whether cash can be withdrawn at any time, but whether transfers and reallocations can be completed globally with extremely low friction. This advantage is particularly evident in scenarios involving cross-border transactions, global asset allocation, and high-frequency capital management.
2.3 Changes in Yield Distribution Structure: From Bank Retention to User Overflow
The most critical change is occurring in the method of yield distribution.
The basic model of traditional banking is:
● Users deposit funds into the bank.
● The bank allocates these funds into loans, bonds, or other assets.
● The bank earns yield on the asset side and pays only low interest to depositors.
● The interest margin becomes the core source of the bank’s profit.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this model; it has supported the commercial banking system for centuries. However, it also means that a large portion of the yield is retained within the institution’s balance sheet, with users sharing only a very small fraction.
In the stablecoin and on-chain yield system, the situation is beginning to change:
● Platforms or protocols can allocate funds to short-term Treasuries, on-chain lending, RWA (Real-World Asset) credit, or trading strategies.
● Users receive a more direct distribution of yield by holding stablecoins, participating in yield products, or parking funds in platform accounts.
This does not mean that risk has disappeared; on the contrary, it means:
The risks originally absorbed and managed within the banking system have begun to partially “overflow” to the user side, manifesting in the form of higher yields.
Therefore, stablecoins are beginning to possess “deposit-like attractiveness” not because they simply replicate a bank account, but because changes have occurred across three dimensions simultaneously:
● Method of Holding: Account → Wallet or Custody
● Method of Liquidity: Periodic Clearing → Real-time Settlement
● Yield Distribution: Bank Retention → User Overflow
When these three dimensions change at the same time, the user’s answer to “where should funds be placed” naturally changes as well.
3. Two Generations of Digital Banking: From Experience Upgrades to Financial Structural Reconstruction
To understand today’s landscape, one must trace back two key waves of digital banking—from “interface beautification” to “underlying architecture reconstruction.” Each wave has gone deeper and carried more disruptive force than the last.
3.1 The First Wave: Fintech Neobanks
In the 2010s, Fintech neobanks such as Chime, Nubank, WeBank, Revolut, and Monzo emerged. The innovation of this stage was essentially a user-experience war against the inefficiencies of traditional banking. Innovations concentrated on the user experience layer: mobile-first interface design, near-zero transfer fees, and instant notification pushes. They eliminated expensive physical branches and converted the saved costs into lower fees and higher user retention.
However, the first wave had a critical limitation: despite the smooth and sophisticated front-end applications, back-end fund clearing still relied on ACH, SWIFT, or domestic clearing systems in various countries. When it came to cross-border settlement or complex financial instructions, they remained unable to escape the settlement delays and capital frictions of the traditional banking system. For example, deposits at Chime are still held on the balance sheet of The Bancorp Bank. Neobanks changed the exterior, but did not disrupt the core.
3.2 The Second Wave: Crypto Neobanks
With the maturation of blockchain technology, Crypto Neobanks—represented by Coinbase, Cash App, Robinhood, and Crypto.com—officially took the stage. The evolution in this stage is no longer limited to UI; it concerns a fundamental change in the definition of financial assets and the methods of custody.
This wave brought three decisive innovations:
● Native Custody Accounts: Unlike traditional bank accounts, which serve only as a number on a ledger, Crypto Neobanks provide asset custody services based on private key management or Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology, supporting the direct holding of various on-chain assets.
● Stablecoin Payment Networks: By integrating stablecoins, these platforms have achieved 24/7 instant settlement, completely bypassing the wire transfer cycles of traditional banks.
● Integrated Yield Products: Utilizing DeFi protocols or compliant tokenized Treasury products, platforms can directly transmit the real yield of underlying assets to users, breaking the traditional banking monopoly on interest margins.
The most historically significant shift in this evolution lies in the reconstruction of the balance sheet. In a traditional context, a user’s wealth is represented as a bank deposit—that is, the bank’s liability. Banks utilize these liabilities for maturity transformation to earn interest margins. But in the second wave, user assets are migrating on a large scale from bank deposits to digital asset custody.
When the balance sheet shifts from being driven by fiat deposits to being driven by digital asset custody, the role of financial institutions also transforms from “capital brokers” to “asset gateways.” This not only improves the efficiency of capital flows, but also lays the technological foundation for the repricing of $100 trillion in global deposits.
In the third quarter of 2025, Coinbase earned $355 million in revenue from its stablecoin business, accounting for approximately 19% of its total revenue. This proportion is steadily rising, marking the accelerated transformation of an exchange into a financial infrastructure platform.
Therefore, the previous wave of digital banking changed “how a bank is used,” while the latter wave is changing “how currency exists, flows, and generates yield.”
4. The On-Chain Financial Stack: How Capital Operates
If the primary difference between Crypto Neobanks and traditional banks lies not in the interface but in the underlying structure, then it is necessary to further deconstruct what actually happens to user funds once they enter this system.
Logically, the current “Yield-Bearing Dollar” system formed around stablecoins consists of three mutually supporting layers: the Custody Layer, the Stablecoin Layer, and the Yield Layer.
4.1 The Custody Layer
In traditional finance, custody means transferring ownership of assets to a third party. However, in the architecture of a Crypto Neobank, the custody layer is the physical foundation of the entire stack. Unlike the account systems of traditional banks, crypto custody is based on a wallet architecture. Assets are recorded on the blockchain in the form of tokens, with ownership relationships that are clear, verifiable, and do not rely on the credit endorsement of intermediary institutions.
The core logic of this layer has shifted from “trusting institutions” to “trusting cryptography.” Through Multi-Party Computation (MPC) and Hardware Security Module (HSM) technologies, control over assets no longer depends on a single physical vault but on distributed private key shards.
Key infrastructure providers include Fireblocks, BitGo, and Anchorage. These institutions provide Crypto Neobanks with institutional-grade asset custody, settlement, and compliant identity verification services. The maturation of the custody layer is a critical prerequisite for the crypto banking industry’s expansion from the retail market into the institutional market.
4.2 The Stablecoin Layer
Stablecoins are the medium of circulation for this entire architecture. US dollar-pegged stablecoins act as a programmable interface between traditional fiat currency and the on-chain ecosystem. Stablecoins not only solve the price volatility issue of crypto assets but, more importantly, enable the programmability of finance, featuring technical characteristics of instant settlement and high liquidity.
Currently, the most widely used on-chain dollars are fiat-collateralized stablecoins, represented by USDT and USDC. Following these are cryptocurrency-collateralized stablecoins like USDS and synthetic dollars like USDe.
As of the first quarter of 2026, global stablecoin circulation has surpassed $319 billion. USDT remains the absolute backbone of the market, with a market capitalization of approximately $184 billion. Despite facing stricter compliance audits, its average daily trading volume remains robust. USDC, with its stable and compliant image among North American and global institutions, maintains a market cap of around $79 billion. Notably, data from early 2026 indicates that USDC briefly surpassed USDT in adjusted on-chain transaction volume, reflecting its strengthening dominance in payment clearing and institutional-grade applications.
The importance of stablecoins lies not only in “pegging the dollar” but in the fact that they allow financial assets to possess programmable liquidity for the first time:
● They can be used as a settlement medium.
● They can be rapidly transferred across borders.
● They can be embedded into lending, payments, derivatives, and yield strategies.
It is not merely “digital cash”; it is the liquidity backbone of the entire on-chain financial stack.
4.3 The Yield Layer
The yield layer is the most disruptive innovation within the entire architecture. Stablecoin holders are no longer passively exposed to inflation erosion as with cash, but can obtain real yields through multiple channels.
At present, the main sources of yield can be broadly categorized into four types:
Source of Yield
Operational Mechanism
Risk/Return Characteristics
Government Bonds
US dollar reserves invested in US Treasuries via RWA protocols
Low risk, pegged to macro benchmark rates
DeFi Lending
Automated lending protocols adjust rates based on supply and demand
High transparency, driven by on-chain activity
RWA Credit
Structured credit loans provided to real-world enterprises or on-chain projects
Higher yield, but carries default and legal enforcement risks
Trading Strategies
Includes Delta-neutral strategies, arbitrage, and liquidity market-making
High complexity, positively correlated with market environment and volatility
4.3.1 Treasury Yields: The Source Closest to Traditional Risk-Free Rates
The most easily understood type of yield today comes from short-term US Treasuries and similar cash equivalents. Compliant stablecoin issuers and certain RWA protocols allocate US dollar reserves to short-term Treasuries and then transmit part of this yield to end users through product structures.
The core of this model is to present interest income—which originally belonged to banks or money market intermediaries—to users with lower friction. Its strong attractiveness over the past two years is mainly because the high-interest-rate environment in the U.S. has kept short-term bond yields in a higher range.
4.3.2 DeFi Lending Yields: From On-Chain Capital Demand
The second category of yield comes from the lending market. When traders, market makers, or protocol users wish to borrow stablecoins, they are willing to pay interest, and the capital providers receive the yield. Protocols such as Aave and Morpho provide a relatively transparent interest rate market where rates adjust automatically based on changes in supply and demand.
Unlike Treasuries, this type of yield is not a direct reflection of macro interest rates but is the result of on-chain capital demand and collateralized financing structures. Therefore, it is typically more volatile, being higher when the market is active and falling rapidly when activity wanes.
4.3.3 RWA Credit Yields: From Real-World Credit Assets
The third category of yield comes from off-chain credit assets, known as RWA (Real-World Asset) credit. These products may allocate user funds to corporate loans, accounts receivable financing, trade finance, or other real-world credit assets, resulting in yields higher than pure Treasury products.
The appeal lies in providing the stablecoin system with a source of yield beyond native on-chain demand, allowing “on-chain dollars” to share in a portion of traditional credit market returns.
However, this model also means that users are no longer just bearing technical and liquidity risks, but risks closer to those in traditional finance: default risk, recourse risk, and legal enforcement risk.
4.3.4 Trading and Strategy Yields: From Market Structure, Not Natural Risk-Free Rates
The fourth category of yield comes from trading, arbitrage, and market-making strategies, including Delta-neutral, Basis trading, funding rate arbitrage, and liquidity market-making. These yields are often most attractive during periods of high price volatility, active derivatives trading, or imbalances in capital structures.
However, they are also the most easily misunderstood category of yield. Many returns that appear significantly higher than those offered by banks are not because “digital dollars naturally should have such high interest rates”, but because users are indirectly taking on more complex market and risk management exposures through platforms.
The combination of these strategies allows stablecoin Annual Percentage Yields (APY) to generally reach 3% to 8%, with some aggressive strategies going even higher. Taking the wealth management businesses of leading platforms such as HTX as an example, crypto platforms are increasingly competing directly with traditional bank savings by offering more efficient capital circulation and a broader range of financial products. Their core advantages can be distilled into several key dimensions:
A highly secure foundation with superior liquidityUnlike traditional banks that rely on long-term fixed deposits, HTX allows users to deposit and withdraw funds at any time, enabling highly flexible liquidity management. At the same time, HTX has maintained over 30 consecutive months with zero security incidents, providing a strong trust foundation for large-scale capital allocation.
A high-yield, high-frequency compounding engineBreaking away from the monthly or quarterly interest models of traditional banks, HTX adopts hourly compounding mechanisms. This high-frequency calculation structure allows users to maximize returns over time. In terms of overall yield performance, stablecoin-based products can offer returns of up to 15%, forming a significant competitive moat and clear industry advantage.
A deeply integrated asset supply networkHTX has established a comprehensive product ecosystem spanning simple earn products, structured products, and on-chain financial offerings. Earn products alone cover more than 300 tokens and over 390 listed projects. For more sophisticated investors with hedging needs, the platform also provides structured derivatives such as “Dual Currency Investment” products, offering proprietary pricing advantages and immediate yield realization upon subscription.
Based on industry data from April. 23, 2026, a comparison of the flexible stablecoin APY structures of leading CEXs shows that platforms generally adopt tiered interest rates based on amount to maintain industry competitiveness and attract long-tail users:
Product Category
HTX
Binance
OKX
Bitget
USDT Flexible
10% (0-500) ;
2.5% (>500)
3.88% (0-200) ;
0.88% (>200)
1.16%
9.37% (0-300) ;
0.99% (>300)
USDC Flexible
5%
5.53% (0-200) ;
0.53% (>200)
0.79%
8.66% (0-500) ;
1.36% (>500)
USDD Flexible
4.25%
/
/
/
USDE Flexible
5%
3.75%
/
3.75%
USD1 Flexible
15% (0-500) ;
4% (>500)
0.15%
/
1%
5. Yield Changes Everything
To understand the impact of stablecoins on traditional banking, one must start from the most basic commercial logic. If technology is the engine of this transformation, then yield is the fuel that ignites everything. Every great migration in financial history has essentially been capital in pursuit of higher efficiency and superior returns.
For centuries, the commercial logic of traditional banking has consistently revolved around the net interest margin (NIM). By absorbing depositor funds at an extremely low cost and issuing loans at significantly higher interest rates, banks earn profit from the massive gap between loan interest and deposit interest after deducting operating costs. The core of this model lies in the control over currency pricing power and the competitive barriers built upon information asymmetry and switching costs.
Stablecoins, by directly penetrating underlying assets—such as U.S. Treasuries, RWAs, or efficient on-chain arbitrage strategies—transmit yields directly to the end holder. These yields are typically maintained between 3% – 8% or even higher. This model directly returns the profits that originally belonged to banking intermediaries to the actual owners of the capital.
Traditional Bank
Stablecoin Platform
Demand Deposits / Savings Deposits
0%–2% APY (with demand deposit APY near 0%)
3% – 8% APY (Some higher)
Commercial/Personal Loan
5% – 10% APY
Treasuries 4% – 5% APY + DeFi Premium
Net Interest Margin
3% – 8% (Owned by bank)
Partially returned to user
Cost of Funds
Near zero (Deposits)
Near transparent (Treasury yields)
Settlement Speed
T+2 Business Days
Real-time, 24/7
When users discover that:
● The interest rate for US dollars in their bank account is near zero or far below the benchmark rate,
● While platforms or protocols can provide higher visible yields through different structures,
Then the flow of capital will naturally be affected.
This does not necessarily mean that a large-scale “deposit relocation” has already occurred, but it means that the long-term monopoly of banks over interest rate distribution has, for the first time, encountered a direct challenge from technology and product structures. According to research by the Federal Reserve in “Banks in the Age of Stablecoins: Some Possible Implications for Deposits, Credit, and Financial Intermediation,” under scenarios of moderate stablecoin adoption, bank lending capacity could decrease by $190 billion to $408 billion. This magnitude is sufficient to shake the liquidity foundation of the entire bank credit system.
6. The Battle for Deposits: Confrontation on Three Fronts
This competition is no longer a battle for market share among traditional banks; it has evolved into a head-on gambit between two completely different financial paradigms.
6.1 Yield Competition
The yields provided by stablecoin platforms are significantly higher than traditional bank deposits in the vast majority of market environments. Coinbase’s platform offers rewards for holding USDC, with an annual percentage rate that once reached 4.25%—more than four times the average deposit rate at U.S. banks at the time. Unlike traditional banks that settle interest monthly, leading platforms such as HTX have implemented hourly compounding interest, greatly enhancing the utility of long-tail capital.
More aggressive strategies emerge from the DeFi sector; Ethena’s staked USDe token, sUSDe, maintained an average annualized yield of approximately 18% in 2024, with current rates fluctuating between 5% and 30%. Such returns are almost unimaginable in the traditional financial world unless one assumes extreme levels of risk.
6.2 Capital Liquidity
The liquidity of digital assets far surpasses that of traditional financial assets. Blockchain networks have achieved 24/7 uninterrupted settlement, allowing funds to cross national borders in seconds without the constraints of banking business days. This completely shatters the cycle limitations of traditional financial T+2 or cross-border remittances.
6.3 Digital User Experience
Compared to the bloated physical branches and cumbersome account opening processes of traditional banks, crypto platforms provide an extremely streamlined mobile experience and optimized product selection. The product design of Crypto Neobanks is mobile-native, supporting one-click account opening, real-time balance updates, borderless transfers, and programmable automated strategies.
7. Regulatory Gambit: The Battle for “Currency Definition Power”
As capital on the scale of hundreds of trillions of dollars begins to be repriced between traditional finance and on-chain protocols, a war over “Currency Definition Power” has fully commenced. This is not merely a technical competition, but the most central policy debate within the current global financial system. Regulators, defenders of traditional banking, and crypto-native innovators are engaged in a fierce struggle over the essence and boundaries of stablecoins.
7.1 The GENIUS Act: A Milestone in U.S. Stablecoin Regulation
In July 2025, the President of the United States signed the GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act), the first federal legislation in the U.S. specifically targeting payment stablecoins. The Act established several key principles:
● Issuers must support stablecoin issuance with 1:1 full reserves held in cash or short-term Treasuries;
● Reserve compositions must be published monthly and undergo independent audits;
● Compliance with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Bank Secrecy Act requirements is mandatory;
● Issuers are explicitly prohibited from directly paying interest or yield to stablecoin holders.
The GENIUS Act clearly forbids stablecoin issuers from providing any form of interest or yield to holders. Furthermore, the Act prohibits issuers from using “deceptive names” in marketing—for example, claiming that their stablecoin is backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, guaranteed by the government, or covered by federal deposit insurance.
However, the ambiguity of the legislative text immediately laid the groundwork for the next round of maneuvering. While the GENIUS Act prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying any form of interest or yield, it does not explicitly ban affiliates or third-party arrangements from providing yield-bearing products. The passage of the Act did not end the debate; rather, it directed it toward a new, more complex, and intense stage.
7.2 Defensive Measures of Traditional Banks: Warnings of Systemic Risk
For traditional banks, digital dollars with yield-bearing attributes constitute the most direct existential threat to their balance sheets. Lobbying groups and economists representing traditional financial interests have raised three core objections:
● Yield-Bearing Stablecoins Essentially Mimic Bank Deposits: Banks argue that when crypto platforms promise users fixed or floating annualized yields and allow users to withdraw funds at any time, the economic substance of such a product is an “unregistered demand deposit.” They functionally replace bank accounts while bypassing stringent capital adequacy and liquidity coverage ratio regulations.
● Lack of Systemic Backstops from Deposit Insurance: Traditional deposits enjoy protection from national-level deposit insurance, which effectively prevents bank runs during market panics. Banks warn that the wealth management pools of crypto platforms lack similar rigid repayment guarantees. If underlying assets default, it could easily trigger a chain collapse akin to a “shadow banking” system.
● Potential Destabilization of Underlying Financing Markets: This is the greatest concern at the macroeconomic level. Traditional banks rely on stable core deposits to issue long-term loans to the real economy. If yield-bearing stablecoins trigger a massive relocation of deposits, banks will be forced to significantly reduce credit scales or borrow funds in the interbank market at extremely high costs. This draining of liquidity would directly drive up financing costs for society at large and could even trigger a credit crisis.
7.3 The CLARITY Act: An Unfinished Legislative Tug-of-War
The legislative-level gambit reached its most intense state during the deliberation of the CLARITY Act (Digital Asset Market Clarity Act). Congress responded to banking industry pressure with the CLARITY Act, extending the yield ban to all digital asset service providers. However, in January 2026, Coinbase announced the withdrawal of its support for the bill, leading to an indefinite postponement of the Senate vote.
On March 20, 2026, Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks announced a compromise: prohibiting passive yield while allowing activity-based rewards. However, Coinbase immediately refused to accept this draft, stating it could not support any provision prohibiting “direct or indirect” payment of yield or any clause “economically equivalent to bank interest.”
The Federal Reserve has maintained a relatively cautious stance on this issue, but its research findings have already had a profound impact on policy discussions. Federal Reserve researchers have found that stablecoins behave more like investment instruments such as money market funds, rather than core deposits. U.S. monetary policy shocks tend to drive capital into high-quality money market funds and out of stablecoins, indicating a substitutive relationship between the two.
The core of the entire regulatory debate ultimately comes down to a difficult problem of asset classification: Do stablecoins belong to payment tools, investment vehicles, or deposit substitutes?
Dimension
Banking Industry Stance
Crypto Industry Stance
Functional Characterization
Disguised deposit substitute
Payment efficiency tool
Nature of Yield
Equivalent to bank interest; should be subject to same regulation
Result of market competition; should be welcomed by consumers
Source of Risk
Systemic risk without insurance protection
Lack of competition caused by regulatory overprotection
Policy Objective
Maintain deposit stability and credit supply
Enhance financial efficiency and user rights
Historical Analogy
Unregulated bank substitute (High Risk)
Money market funds (Innovation eventually accepted)
The outcome of this regulatory gambit will directly determine the ownership of trillions of dollars in interests, as well as the fundamental architecture of the U.S. financial system for the next decade.
8. The Counterattack of Traditional Banks: Tokenization and Underlying Architecture Reconstruction
Faced with the erosion of their deposit base by crypto platforms and the yield-driven competitive pressure of digital dollars, the traditional banking industry has moved beyond its initial phase of defense and criticism, and has begun launching substantive countermeasures at the foundational system level. The core strategy of this response is not to fully embrace permissionless crypto-native architectures, but to absorb the efficiency advantages of blockchain technology and develop competitive models that can directly rival crypto neobanks within a compliant framework. Banks are attempting to demonstrate, through technological means, that traditional credit systems can also achieve round-the-clock capital flows, thereby reclaiming institutional and long-tail capital diverted by stablecoins.
8.1 Tokenized Deposits
In this reconstruction of underlying architecture, tokenized deposits have become the primary weapon of traditional finance’s counteroffensive. Their ultimate objective is to establish a blockchain-based deposit system, enabling regulated commercial bank money to possess programmability and instant settlement capabilities similar to stablecoins, while retaining deposit insurance and regulatory backing within the traditional financial system.
JPMorgan Chase began exploring blockchain as early as 2015, and in 2019 launched blockchain-based deposit accounts (Kinexys Digital Payments) on a private permissioned chain. In June 2025, its blockchain division Kinexys officially released the U.S. dollar-denominated deposit token JPMD, operating on the Base public blockchain, marking the first time the world’s largest bank deployed deposit products onto a public blockchain. In November 2025, JPMorgan Chase officially opened JPMD to institutional clients, with B2C2, Coinbase, and Mastercard completing test transactions. Kinexys co-head Naveen Mallela stated that Kinexys currently processes over $1 trillion in annualized payments. If even a portion of the bank’s daily trillions of dollars in payment flows were migrated onto blockchain, the resulting scale would far exceed that of the entire stablecoin industry.
At the same time, Citibank continues to advance its Citi Token Services initiative, planning to launch crypto asset custody services and develop tokenized deposit products in 2026. Bank of New York Mellon is evaluating tokenized deposit solutions that would allow clients to conduct payments via blockchain rails. In the United Kingdom, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, and HSBC have initiated pilot programs for tokenized pound-denominated deposits.
8.2 Bank-Issued Stablecoins
In addition to transforming existing commercial deposit accounts, traditional financial institutions and giants have begun to directly experiment with issuing regulated, bank-affiliated stablecoins and consortium tokens, attempting to establish liquidity reservoirs belonging to traditional finance within the public blockchain ecosystem.
As a traditional payments giant with hundreds of millions of users, PayPal launched PYUSD, mapping fiat US dollars directly onto the public blockchain through a compliant issuer. This move completely blurs the boundary between traditional fintech and crypto networks.
Furthermore, banking consortiums composed of multiple insured banks, such as the USDF Consortium, are actively promoting the issuance of consortium-level tokens. These consortiums aim to solve the inefficiency of clearing between different small and medium-sized banks by minting unified standard tokenized fiat deposits on the blockchain, thereby countering the market monopoly of non-bank stablecoins like USDC and USDT in the payments sector.
8.3 Adoption of Blockchain Settlement Rails and Practical Dilemmas
Whether through the internal innovation of tokenized deposits or the external breakout of bank-affiliated stablecoins, the technical essence behind these moves points toward the comprehensive deployment of blockchain settlement networks. Traditional banks are actively integrating instant settlement and tokenized payment mechanisms, attempting to thoroughly eliminate the friction costs brought by T+2 settlement cycles, high wire transfer fees, and complex correspondent banking networks in the traditional financial system.
However, despite the grand strategic vision, the overall adoption of this new architecture by the traditional banking industry remains very slow. This sluggishness does not stem from a lack of technical feasibility but is constrained by heavy historical baggage and complex structural resistance.
While crypto neobanks can rapidly deploy high-yield, income-generating assets globally with agile software iteration speeds, the tokenization efforts of traditional banks are often constrained by endless proof-of-concept cycles, lengthy compliance approval processes, and internal conflicts of interest among departments.
9. Evolutionary Paths of the Future Financial Architecture
What will be the ultimate outcome of this competition between fundamental currency forms and business models? Based on current regulatory dynamics, the speed of technological iteration, and the profit-seeking instinct of capital, the evolution of the future financial architecture may manifest in three distinct paths.
9.1 Scenario 1: Total Victory for Crypto Neobanks
In the most radical evolutionary path, stablecoins will dominate the global payment and savings markets, and Crypto Neobanks will become the core of a new generation of financial infrastructure.
For traditional commercial banks, this would be a systemic defeat. Once depositors become accustomed to “interest-bearing cash” that is directly driven by underlying assets and flows 24/7, banks will inevitably lose the massive, low-cost deposits that serve as their core lifeline. This would be followed immediately by the complete exhaustion of the most lucrative parts of the banking business: payment clearing fees and cross-border exchange profits. Traditional banks would be forced to devolve into low-margin credit providers serving only specific asset-heavy industries or highly regulated fields.
9.2 Scenario 2: Successful Tokenization Counterattack by Traditional Banks
In stark contrast to the first scenario, traditional financial institutions successfully complete the upgrade of their underlying technology. Banks not only maintain their vast pools of depositor funds using their endorsement of trust but also achieve cross-bank and international real-time clearing and the automatic execution of complex financial contracts through tokenized deposits. Crypto infrastructure evolves into a technical service layer for banks rather than a competitor.
The Kinexys path by JPMorgan Chase represents the clearest practical attempt at this scenario. If large banks can establish a stable tokenized deposit network among institutional client groups and use their existing distribution channels and regulatory relationships to form barriers, this path possesses considerable feasibility.
Under this landscape, crypto-native neobanks and the underlying public chain technologies behind them would no longer exist as disruptors; instead, they would retreat behind the scenes to become pure back-end infrastructure supporting the operation of the entire traditional financial system.
9.3 Scenario 3: The Emergence of a Hybrid Financial Stack
While the first two scenarios constitute theoretical poles, looking at the evolutionary history of financial systems and current regulatory maneuvering, the construction of a multi-layered, integrated hybrid financial stack is the future vision with the greatest practical possibility.
In this endgame architecture, future financial services will no longer be a closed loop of a single system, but an open vertical network seamlessly assembled from various components.
At the very front end of the hybrid architecture, digital wallets with decentralized or hybrid custody will replace traditional bank account systems, becoming a universal super-digital identity and financial gateway for individuals and enterprises. At the asset circulation layer, compliant stablecoins issued by non-bank institutions and tokenized deposits issued by commercial banks will operate in parallel, jointly serving as settlement media and value carriers for global digital commerce to meet different risk preferences in various scenarios.
Traditional commercial banks will still retain their core position, performing systemic roles in large-scale credit creation and macro-liquidity management, while deeply integrating their underlying core ledgers with open on-chain protocols. Through this hybrid model, global capital can enjoy the ultimate efficiency and “yield equality” brought by crypto networks while maintaining the macro stability and regulatory baselines required by traditional finance.
Layer
Main Participants & Functions
Competitive Advantage
Wallet Layer
Coinbase, MetaMask, Robinhood; User interface and asset custody gateway
User experience and ecosystem coverage
Stablecoin Layer
USDC, USDT, USDe; Payment, settlement, and yield infrastructure
Efficiency and yield
Tokenized Deposit Layer
JPMD, SoFiUSD, Bank-issued tokens; Compliant on-chain bank currency
Credit endorsement and regulatory protection
Traditional Bank Layer
JPMorgan, Citi, HSBC, etc.; Credit creation and regulatory anchoring
License qualifications and deposit insurance
10. Investment Landscape and Capital Flows
The flow of capital is often the most sensitive leading indicator of a fundamental shift in financial paradigms. This transformation has spawned massive investment opportunities, and capital is accelerating its accumulation across various nodes of the value chain. From Crypto Neobanks that directly reach users to the underlying infrastructure that drives asset circulation, capital focus is primarily divided into four core tracks.
10.1 Crypto Neobanks: Traffic Gateways and Asset Portals
At the very front end of the ecosystem are the Crypto Neobanks that directly control user relationships. They are completing a metamorphosis from “single trading platforms” into “all-around wealth management and savings hubs.”
Coinbase: As the absolute leader in compliant crypto entry points, Coinbase is deeply tethered to the USDC ecosystem, providing platform users with seamless conversion and native yield for stablecoins. Furthermore, Coinbase’s diversified revenue structure—including transaction fees, stablecoin yield, Base chain ecosystem fees, and institutional custody services—is accelerating its transformation from an exchange into a financial infrastructure platform.
Robinhood: Starting from commission-free stock trading, Robinhood is accelerating the integration of digital wallets and on-chain interest-bearing functions, attempting to completely migrate its vast base of young retail investors from traditional bank accounts to its closed-loop financial ecosystem.
10.2 Stablecoin Infrastructure: The “Mints” of the Digital Dollar
Stablecoin infrastructure represents the “commercial central banks” of the digital age. Capital highly favors this sector because its business model has proven to be the most sustainably profitable cash cow in the current crypto market.
Tether (USDT): As the issuer of the world’s most liquid and largest market-cap stablecoin, USDT has become the underlying consensus for cross-border payments and wealth storage in emerging markets.
Circle (USDC): With extremely high transparency and deep integration into the U.S. regulatory framework, Circle has won the favor of institutional capital and become the preferred denomination standard for numerous DeFi protocols and traditional financial on-chain experiments.
PayPal (PYUSD): By integrating stablecoin issuance with its global payment network, PayPal represents the entry path for traditional payment institutions, creating a compliant bridge for hundreds of millions of existing PayPal users to access on-chain yield protocols.
10.3 Yield Layer Infrastructure: The Core of On-Chain Interest Rates
Yield layer infrastructure is the core technical engine that allows “Yield-Bearing Currency” to exist. Capital is densely positioning itself in decentralized or hybrid protocols capable of providing transparent, sustainable, and risk-controlled yields.
Aave: As a leader in the DeFi lending space, Aave has established a massive and time-tested capital pool model. By automatically adjusting supply and demand interest rates through algorithms, it provides the most fundamental on-chain risk-free and low-risk benchmark yields for global stablecoin holders.
Morpho: An optimization layer built atop underlying lending protocols, Morpho greatly enhances capital efficiency through a peer-to-peer matching mechanism. It provides higher yields for lenders and lower costs for borrowers, representing the trend of on-chain credit evolving toward higher precision.
Ondo Finance: As a frontrunner in the RWA track, Ondo Finance successfully tokenized U.S. Treasuries. It has opened a channel between traditional macro interest rates and crypto-native assets, providing a scalable and compliant Treasury yield path for massive stablecoin capital.
10.4 Custody Layer Infrastructure: The “Physical Vaults” for Institutional Entry
For pensions, sovereign wealth funds, and large hedge funds with massive capital scales, a prerequisite for large-scale entry is a sufficient secure custody foundation. Custody infrastructure is the necessary path for connecting traditional compliance requirements with cryptographic native assets.
Fireblocks: Utilizing its leading Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology, Fireblocks has become the industry standard, providing thousands of institutions with networks for the secure transfer, storage, and issuance of digital assets. It essentially constructs the back-end clearing hub for crypto finance.
Anchorage: As the first crypto digital bank to receive a U.S. federal charter, Anchorage combines top-tier cryptographic security with a compliance status equivalent to that of major traditional banks, providing the highest level of policy safety cushion for “Wall Street’s regulars” to enter the “Yield-Bearing Currency” market.
11. Core Risk Assessment
While Crypto Neobanks are reshaping the global deposit landscape through “Yield-Bearing Currency” and instant liquidity, this emerging financial stack is not indestructible. Compared to the traditional banking system, its risks are not concentrated at a single point but are distributed across yield structures, liquidity mechanisms, technical architectures, and the political regulatory environment, exhibiting stronger interconnectivity under extreme conditions. Before the digital dollar can fully disrupt the traditional banking model, capital and market participants must confront four core risks facing its underlying architecture and external environment.
11.1 Regulatory Restrictions on Yield
Regulatory restriction on yield is the most direct and disruptive policy risk facing Crypto Neobanks. As previously mentioned, “yield” is the core driver migrating traditional deposits to on-chain networks. However, global regulators remain highly vigilant regarding “unregistered interest-bearing products.”
If regulators explicitly characterize stablecoin wealth management products with fixed or floating yields as “unregistered securities,” platforms will face massive fines and be forced to delist core products.
Legislation aimed at regulating stablecoins, such as the GENIUS Act, often tends to prohibit compliant stablecoin issuers from directly paying interest to holders. If this restriction is passed down, blocking the channel for Crypto Neobanks to transmit underlying Treasury yields to users, their “high-interest moat” against traditional banks will cease to exist. Meanwhile, the formation of divergent frameworks—such as the EU’s MiCA, Hong Kong’s Stablecoin Ordinance, and the U.S. GENIUS Act—will also drive up cross-border compliance costs.
11.2 Liquidity Risk and Bank Run Crises
Although crypto wealth management platforms generally promise “deposit and withdraw at any time,” their underlying yield sources—whether Treasuries, DeFi lending, RWA credit, or strategy assets—possess varying degrees of maturity structures, liquidity differences, and clearing dependencies. This illusion of liquidity is extremely fragile under extreme market pressure. In a normal market environment, this mismatch is hidden. However, under extreme pressure, it manifests rapidly.
The typical transmission path includes:
- Concentrated user redemptions → Platform needs to liquidate underlying assets. 2) Insufficient liquidity for underlying assets → Forced sale at a discount. 3) Falling asset prices → Decreasing collateral value (DeFi). 4) Triggering chain liquidations → Further liquidity contraction. 5) Withdrawal delays or freezes → Collapse of confidence → Secondary bank run.
Even if yields are derived from the safest short-term U.S. Treasuries, a platform forced to sell Treasuries at a discount on the secondary market to meet cash redemptions during a pan-network panic run would still face a massive liquidity gap. Latest data shows that the combined U.S. Treasury holdings of Tether and Circle have surpassed those of Saudi Arabia. Massive redemptions could impact the short-term Treasury market.
In the on-chain system, this risk is further amplified:
● DeFi lending relies on collateral and liquidation mechanisms.
● Cross-chain assets rely on bridging and asset mapping.
● Yield strategies rely on continuous market liquidity.
Once any of these links fail, liquidity pressure is rapidly magnified through the system.
Many crypto banks route funds into on-chain lending protocols to capture higher yields. In the event of extreme market volatility, a sudden collapse in the value of on-chain collateral could trigger cascading liquidations, potentially exhausting liquidity pools instantly and leaving user withdrawal requests indefinitely delayed or blocked. Furthermore, the protocols upon which yield strategies rely are subject to potential code vulnerabilities and governance attacks.
11.3 Custody Failure and Technical Vulnerabilities
In traditional finance, deposit security is rigidly backed by national-level deposit insurance, such as the FDIC mechanism in the U.S. In the crypto financial stack, the foundation of security shifts from “state credit” to “code and cryptography,” which introduces entirely new systemic failure points. In the 2022 Celsius case, the court ruled that assets in “Earn” accounts belonged to the bankruptcy estate, meaning users held unsecured claims. This legal precedent serves as a reminder that entrusting assets to a crypto platform is not legally equivalent to a bank deposit.
While top custodians like Fireblocks and BitGo employ advanced Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology, the wallet architectures, API interfaces, and internal risk control processes of crypto platforms remain prime targets for hackers. If private keys are stolen or internal employees perform unauthorized operations, funds face irreversible and permanent loss.
11.4 Structural Risk: The Fragility of Yield Sources
The resilience of different yield sources under extreme environments varies significantly.
● Treasuries: Most stable and resistant to on-chain incidents; however, highly dependent on interest rate cycles (yields drop when rates cut); risks exist in custody/disclosure and off-chain execution chains.
● DeFi Lending: Relies on the Collateral—Oracle—Liquidation chain; prone to amplified risk during sharp price fluctuations due to collateral distortion and liquidation congestion.
● RWA Credit: Low sensitivity to on-chain incidents, but the core lies in credit default and legal enforcement; maturity mismatch and information disclosure risks exist.
● Trading/Strategies: Highest yield elasticity but also the most unstable; relies on volatility and spreads; prone to liquidity evaporation and strategy failure in extreme markets.
Source
Interest Rate Sensitivity
Liquidity Risk
Credit Risk
Market Risk
Regulatory Risk
Government Bonds
High
Low
Low
Low
Medium
DeFi
Medium
Medium-High
Medium
Medium-High
Medium
RWA
Medium
Medium-High
High
Low-Medium
High
Strategy
Low-Medium
High
Medium
High
Medium
Events like Kelp DAO have already demonstrated that even if an individual protocol is secure, risks will be amplified through the system if issues arise in cross-chain assets, collateral structures, or liquidity layers.
This means the yield-bearing currency system is not a single risk, but a “multi-risk overlapping structure.”
When macro interest rates decline, on-chain liquidity contracts, credit defaults rise, or market volatility fails, different yield sources may come under pressure simultaneously.
11.5 Lobbying Pressure from Traditional Banking
The rise of Crypto Neobanks is severing the profit arteries of traditional commercial banks, and the latter will not stand idly by. Traditional banks may push regulators through lobbying to implement stricter capital adequacy requirements, forcing crypto platforms to bear heavy compliance costs equivalent to those of major banks, thereby erasing their marginal cost advantage.
The banking industry could also physically sever the liquidity bridge between Crypto Neobanks and the fiat world by cutting off settlement networks and refusing to provide fiat custody accounts—akin to a historical “Operation Choke Point 2.0″—isolating them within closed on-chain systems.
The future of yield-bearing currency depends not only on technical superiority but also on the extent to which it can withstand these four systemic risks. For investors and industry practitioners, crypto neobanks require both strong security engineering capabilities and sound political judgment, along with a balanced approach to compliance.
11.6 Risk is Not a Flaw, But the System Itself
Overall, the risks of the yield-bearing currency system are not isolated defects, but integral components of its structure.
● Higher yield means a more complex risk combination.
● Greater liquidity implies more sensitive bank run transmission.
● A more open architecture means fewer institutional backstops.
Therefore, the real question is not “is this system risky,” but rather:
In different macro cycles and extreme scenarios, can this system still maintain stability and redeemability?
For investors and industry participants, the key to judging a platform lies not in its current APY, but in:
● Whether yield sources are transparent.
● Whether risk assumption is clear.
● Whether the liquidity structure is matched.
● Whether it possesses survivability under stress testing.
The future of yield-bearing currency depends not only on technical and product innovation but also on whether it can gradually establish verifiable security boundaries and institutional trust beyond the yield itself.
12. Conclusion
After centuries of evolution, the global financial system stands at a decisive watershed. From early physical branches to the FinTech interaction revolution of the mobile internet era, most banking innovation has remained at the level of surface-level experience improvements. The rise of Crypto Neobanks and the new on-chain financial stack represents a structural disruption that penetrates deep into the foundations of balance sheets.
The core cornerstone of this financial revolution lies in the introduction of an unprecedented new asset class: “Yield-Bearing Programmable Currency.” It simultaneously possesses the circulation functions of currency and the yield functions of savings, all while running on a permissionless global network. This shatters the core logic of traditional banking: depositors no longer have to accept interest rates near zero; they now have a real alternative. Yield-bearing programmable currency possesses the ultimate liquidity of 24/7 global instant settlement and the ability to directly penetrate and distribute underlying high-interest yields with low friction. When “smart code” replaces bloated bank credit departments, money itself gains the capacity for self-interest generation and automated circulation.
The popularization of this new concept is triggering a structural shift in global capital markets.
From a macro perspective, the impact of this transformation is multi-layered:
● For the Banking Industry: Net interest margins will face continuous compression pressure, the median cost of funding may shift upward, and credit creation capacity will be constrained.
● For Regulators: Finding a balance between encouraging innovation and preventing systemic risk will be the most difficult policy challenge of the coming years.
● For Depositors and Users: The inclusive dividends of digital finance are being realized; anyone in the world with a smartphone can access yields close to institutional levels.
● For the International Monetary System: The global expansion of US dollar stablecoins may strengthen the “exorbitant privilege” of the dollar, but it may also trigger a de-dollarization backlash.
Looking ahead, the boundaries between traditional banks and Crypto Neobank platforms will become increasingly blurred, and the ultimate battlefield that determines victory or defeat is already very clear: The future of banking is, in essence, a life-and-death struggle over “who can control digital deposits.”
Whether it is crypto platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood building high-interest savings pools through stablecoin infrastructure, or Wall Street giants like JPMorgan and Citi striving to advance tokenized deposits, all participants are vying for the same goal: to become the ultimate gateway for the next generation of digital capital.
In this gambit, the final winner may not necessarily be a single technology or a specific institutional form, but rather those financial networks that can perfectly integrate absolute security, global instant liquidity, and transparent market yields. In this upcoming new cycle, capital will flow unreservedly to where efficiency is highest. If traditional banks cannot adapt to this interest-bearing logic driven by “a single line of code,” they will ultimately face the fate of being marginalized by the era. The true winners will be those participants capable of building bridges between the two worlds.
About HTX Ventures
HTX Ventures, the global investment division of HTX, integrates investment, incubation, and research to identify the best and brightest teams worldwide. With more than decade-long history as an industry pioneer, HTX Ventures excels at identifying cutting-edge technologies and emerging business models within the sector. To foster growth within the blockchain ecosystem, we provide comprehensive support to projects, including financing, resources, and strategic advice.
HTX Ventures currently backs over 300 projects spanning multiple blockchain sectors, with select high-quality initiatives already trading on the HTX exchange. Furthermore, as one of the most active FOF (Fund of Funds) funds, HTX Ventures invests in 30 top global funds and collaborates with leading blockchain funds such as Polychain, Dragonfly, Bankless, Gitcoin, Figment, Nomad, Animoca, and Hack VC to jointly build a blockchain ecosystem. Visit us here.
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https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=409457
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