Will crypto rewards survive upcoming CLARITY law? A plain-English guide to Section 404

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, better known as the CLARITY Act, was supposed to draw clean lines around crypto assets and which regulator gets the first call.

CryptoSlate has already walked readers through the bill’s larger architecture ahead of the January markup, including what changed, what stayed unresolved, and why jurisdiction and state preemption may matter as much as the headline definitions.

The part consuming the most oxygen right now is narrower and much more nuanced: it's about who can pay consumers to keep dollars parked in a particular place.

That dispute became harder to ignore after Coinbase said it couldn't support the Senate draft in its current form, and the Senate Banking Committee postponed a planned markup. Since then, the bill has shifted into the phase where staff rewrite verbs, and lawmakers test whether a new coalition is real.

Senate Democrats said they would keep talking with industry representatives about concerns, while the Senate Agriculture Committee pointed to a parallel schedule, including their Jan. 21 draft and a hearing scheduled for Jan. 27.

If you want the simplest way to understand why stablecoin rewards became the tripwire, forget the slogans and picture one screen: a user sees a dollar balance labeled USDC or another stablecoin and an offer to earn something for keeping it there. In Washington, that “something” is interest. In banking, “there” is a substitute for deposits.

In the Senate draft, the conflict is concentrated in Section 404, titled “Preserving rewards for stablecoin holders,” a section that essentially tells platforms what they can and cannot do.

The line Congress is trying to draw

Section 404 says digital asset service providers can't provide any form of interest or yield that's “solely in connection with the holding of a payment stablecoin.”

That targets the simplest rewards product: park a payment stablecoin on an exchange or in a hosted wallet and receive a quoted return that accrues over time, with no additional behavior required. That looks like interest to lawmakers, and it looks like a direct funding competitor to banks that rely on deposits.

The key phrase here is “solely in connection with the holding,” as it makes the ban depend on causality. If the only reason a user receives value is that they hold the stablecoin, the platform is out of bounds. If a platform can credibly tie the value to something else, the draft offers a path forward.

CLARITY tries to define that path by allowing “activity-based rewards and incentives,” then listing what that activity can include: transactions and settlement, using a wallet or platform, loyalty or subscription programs, merchant acceptance rebates, providing liquidity or collateral, and even “governance, validation, staking, or other ecosystem participation.”

Put simply, Section 404 is separating being paid for parking from being paid for participation. In product language, it invites a second fight over what counts as participation, because fintech has spent a decade learning how to convert economics into engagement with a few extra taps.

The parts users will actually notice

Most readers will focus on the yield ban and overlook the layer that could reshape the front end of stablecoin products: marketing and disclosures.

Section 404 prohibits marketing that suggests a payment stablecoin is a bank deposit or FDIC insured, that rewards are “risk-free” or comparable to deposit interest, or that the stablecoin itself is paying the reward. It also pushes toward standardized plain-language statements that a payment stablecoin isn't a deposit and isn't government-insured, plus clear attribution of who is funding the reward and what a user must do to receive it.

Banks and credit unions care about perception because perception is what moves deposits. Their public argument is that passive stablecoin yield encourages consumers to treat stablecoin balances like safe cash, which can accelerate deposit migration, with community banks taking the hit first.

The Senate draft validates that concern by requiring a future report on deposit outflows and explicitly calling out deposit flight from community banks as a risk to study.

However, crypto companies say that stablecoin reserves already generate income, and platforms want flexibility to share some of that value with users, especially in products that compete with bank accounts and money market funds.

The most useful question we can ask here is what survives this bill and in what form.

A flat APY for holding stablecoins on an exchange is the high-risk case, because the benefit is “solely” tied to holding, and platforms will need a genuine activity hook to keep that going.

Cashback or points for spending stablecoins is much safer, because merchant rebates and transaction-linked rewards are explicitly contemplated, and that tends to favor cards, commerce perks, and various other “use-to-earn” mechanics.

Collateral or liquidity-based rewards are likely possible because “providing liquidity or collateral” appears in the list, but the UX burden rises there because the risk profile looks more like lending than payments. DeFi pass-through yield inside a custodial wrapper remains possible in theory.

However, platforms won't be able to avoid disclosures, and disclosures create friction, because platforms will have to explain who's paying, what qualifies, and what risks exist in a way that will be tested in enforcement and in court.

The throughline is that Section 404 nudges rewards away from idle balance yield and toward rewards that look like payments, loyalty, subscriptions, and commerce.

The issuer firewall and the phrase that will decide partnerships

Section 404 also includes a clause that doesn't look like much until you place it next to real-world stablecoin distribution deals. It says a permitted payment stablecoin issuer is not deemed to be paying interest or yield just because a third party offers rewards independently, unless the issuer “directs the program.”

This is the bill’s attempt to keep issuers from being treated like interest-paying banks because an exchange or wallet layered incentives on top. It also warns issuers to be careful about how close they get to platform rewards, because that closeness can easily be seen as direction.

“Directs the program” is the main hinge here. Direction can mean formal control, but the hard cases are influence that looks like control from the outside: co-marketing, revenue shares tied to balances, technical integrations designed to support a rewards funnel, or contractual requirements about how a platform describes the stablecoin experience.

After Coinbase’s objection and the markup delay, that ambiguity became the battleground, because late-stage bill work often comes down to whether a single word is narrowed, broadened, or defined.

The most plausible endpoint is, unfortunately, not a clean victory for either side. The market will most likely see a new regime implemented where platforms still offer rewards, but they do so through activity-based programs that look like payments and engagement mechanics, while issuers keep their distance unless they're prepared to be treated as participants in the compensation structure.

That's why Section 404 matters beyond the current news cycle. It's about which rewards can be offered at scale without stablecoins being sold as deposits by another name, and about which partnerships will be deemed to cross the line from distribution into direction.

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