U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One before departing Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, March 1, 2026, on his way back to Washington, DC.
Mandel Ngan | afp | fake images
President Donald Trump has thrown his support behind cryptocurrency companies in their high-stakes battle with US banks over whether they can offer interest-like returns on stablecoins.
Trump, in a social media post on Tuesday night, increased pressure on banks to concede on the issue of stablecoin performance.
That is the key point of controversy delaying congressional approval of the Clarity Act, which is a companion bill to the Genius Act passed last year, establishing a framework for regulated stablecoins.
“The Genius Act is being threatened and undermined by the banks, and that is unacceptable,” Trump said in his post. “They need to come to a good deal with the crypto industry because that’s what’s best for the American people.”
Coinbase Shares rose as much as 11% in early trading Wednesday, while shares of JPMorgan Chase and bank of america fell less than 1%.
While Trump’s decision to support the cryptocurrency industry could sway members of his Republican Party in the GOP-led Congress, it is unclear whether their support is enough to ensure passage of the bill. The move also raises new questions about potential conflicts of interest, as the president and his family have reportedly generated hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth from interests in companies, including crypto platform World Liberty Financial.
Dispute between industries centers on whether crypto companies like it Coinbase can offer returns on stablecoins. While crypto companies see it as a consumer-friendly innovation that will allow people to make money on their idle funds, banks have warned that the competing product could siphon trillions of dollars from their industry.
Executives at JPMorgan and Bank of America, the two largest U.S. lenders by assets, have cited a Treasury study that indicated banks could lose up to $6.6 trillion in deposits if stablecoins offered a yield. That could destabilize some banks, especially smaller ones, and eliminate a source of financing for loans to businesses across the country.
“It can’t be, you have these people doing one thing without any regulation, and these people doing another,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told CNBC’s Leslie Picker on Monday. “If you do that, the public will pay. It will get bad.”
In recent months, the president has hosted a series of White House meetings between the two sides in hopes of reaching a deal, but the banks have not budged, according to people with knowledge of the meetings.
Now, it is explicitly throwing its weight behind cryptocurrencies.
“Americans should make money with their money,” Trump said in the post. “This industry cannot be taken away from the American people when it is so close to becoming a real success.”
