Robin Cook 🛡️

@BankersPrez @WSJ @nytimes @AmerBanker Beautiful tribute - thank you for posting. I loved the chance to get to work with her.

Another well deserved tribute for Karen Petrou I cherished every opportunity to learn from her Kudos to the @WSJ for this article and also to the @nytimes and @AmerBanker for their coverage of her inspiring career too Karen Petrou, a banking analyst who died at the age of 72, often said that the stereotypes thrust on blind people were worse than actually being blind wsj.com/business/karen… via @WSJ

Arguably my favorite part of this rewards/yield debate has been when bankers say “if we allow this, then we’ll see massive deposit flight.” Crypto has already been offering rewards/yield on stablecoins FOR YEARS. Where is the deposit flight? Is it in the room with us right now?

[Whispers] Yield-bearing payment stablecoins aren’t the problem you should be worrying about. There are already plenty of high-yield options out there (from banks and non-banks). Your customers are your customers because they value the other things you do for them.

Can someone please explain to me the logic here? No compromise on CLARITY means no restrictions on intermediaries offering stablecoin rewards. If you believe the banks’ argument about deposit flight, this would be catastrophic. Feels like I’m watching an arsonist threaten to burn down their own home.

Thanks to the @milkeninstitute for hosting a great discussion on stablecoins and U.S. crypto leadership today. It's clear stablecoins are here to stay. The question now is how to modernize the system to implement GENIUS and allow innovation to grow, scale, and develop.

@standwithcrypto @masonlynaugh Congrats @masonlynaugh - exactly the right person at this time!

1/ We’re thrilled to announce that @masonlynaugh has been named executive director after more than 2 years leading our national grassroots strategy as community director. He helped grow SWC’s community to 2.7M+ advocates nationwide — and in this new role, he’ll continue expanding our membership, influence, and impact in Congress and at the ballot box.

I want to give a shoutout to @brian_armstrong and the rest of the Coinbase team for taking a principled stance on the stablecoin yield issue, however contentious it has become. I know it's easy to dismiss it as their self-interest, but this argument is overrated. Stablecoins will be so competitive that eventually nobody will make money from the yield, one way or another. One could even argue that Clarity would significantly boost Coinbase's other revenue-generating products, and those have better moats. The yield issue is personal for those of us who came to crypto for the right reasons. Not for any financial reason—I myself have no direct dog in this fight—but out of principle. A yield-bearing digital dollar that is issued by an unlevered institution, and can be used by anyone anywhere without permission, to make 24/7 payments, on a platform where it can be atomically swapped for any other asset, this is one of the greatest monetary products ever invented. It gives ordinary people the kind of access and income that Wall Street never has, and importantly, never will. It also allows the kind of financial innovation that TradFi gave up on a long time ago: useful, creative, disruptive. The big banks trying to kill this type of progress via legislation is wrong. What other industry tries to outlaw competition and lobbies for rules that make their customers worse off? Particularly after the endless bailouts it has collected from those same customers? But for them to do this via lies and misinformation, often emanating from their highest executives, that's just shameful. It offends the little boy inside me who was taught a long time ago to always tell the truth, even if it costs me something. I won't rehash every debate here, but let it be said once and for all that banks are not vital for most credit creation in America. That there has never been a credible academic argument that allowing competition for deposits would materially hurt lending. That cheap deposits enable bank profits, not cheap credit. That it is the big banks who are likely to destroy community banking thanks to their aggressive expansion plans (and TBTF Status), not stablecoins. That it is just as likely that yield-bearing stablecoins decrease the cost of credit across the US economy as it is they increase it. The only thing we know for sure is such a product would increase income for savers. That barring yield on domestic stablecoins will just mean our tax dollars flow to foreign holders who don't have such restrictions. Foreigners shouldn't have access to better dollars than we do. I understand the argument that drawing a line on this issue could prove costly for the industry, particularly if the political winds shift. I also understand the importance of compromise. But there are some battles where you just have to draw a line, because the tactics used by the opposition reveal a lack of integrity. If Wall Street succeeds in hampering stablecoin adoption it will go after permissionless networks and DeFi next. Kudos to Coinbase for fighting the good fight. Disclosure: I have no financial ownership or relationship with Coinbase whatsoever, except being their customer. I think their fees are way too high and their products are often crappy. They should spend more resources on protecting customers from scams.

@mitchadventures Yeeeaaahhhhh!

I’d like to think the trust and risk karaoke tradition during offsites inspired a Super Bowl ad. Maybe, just maybe 😉

46 states allow earning through staking—Wisconsin is an outlier. Thanks to @RepAdamNeylon for leading AB 892, which would align WI with what the SEC and nearly everyone else already agrees on: staking as a service ≠ a security. Appreciated the opportunity to testify this week.

I will never get over how the banking lobby looked at GENIUS' yield prohibition and said "Looks good. You kids have fun with your Bitcoin and your crypto and everything else you're playing with" and now Jamie Dimon is losing it on Brian Armstrong now realizing the implications.

Something this WSJ piece omits is that what @brian_armstrong is arguing for is not obviously in Coinbase's interest: in a world where yield sharing is prohibited, USDC will at least in a first-order way be more directly profitable for Coinbase. As far as I can tell, Brian's position stems from his belief in the importance of a vibrant and competitive market that protects consumer liberty, and I think he deserves a lot of credit for that. wsj.com/finance/curren….

Kind of amazing to read in the WSJ of big bank CEOs being mean or short to @brian_armstrong at Davos over Clarity. These are the CEOs of some of the largest companies in the world. They represent over $5 trillion in balance sheet and hundreds of billions in annual revenues. They've collected gobs of money in bailouts over the years and have regulatory moats every other industry could only cream of. But it's a $50b crypto company they think is harming them? The thing that frustrates me most about the stablecoin debate is the sheer amount of inaccuracy and misrepresentation that bank CEOs now spew on a regular basis. Some of the more egregious ones: Stablecoins hurt borrowers: False. They help savers and people who want better payments. That's literally everyone, every consumer and business in the country. Borrowers are a tiny subset of that group. The borrowers who get their credit from a bank (as opposed to capital markets or the government) are an even smaller subset. The government has forecast $6 in threatened deposits: False. That entirely made up figure, with little academic rigor, was put out by a private sector advisory group, many of its members work at banks. Stablecoins are especially dangerous to small banks: False. The too big to fail banks are the real threat to community banks. We saw this post-SVB when massive deposits ran from small banks to the TBTF ones. Many of the largest banks have ambitious branch expansion plans in the coming years. JPM alone is executing a plan to open 1000 new branches, many in new markets. Why do they want to do this? To take deposits from smaller banks. The CEO of PNC said as much to @TheStalwart & @tracyalloway on their podcast recently Imagine a 60 year old farmer in Nebraska who currently banks at a small community bank in town. If he switches, what do you think he's likely to switch to, a checking account at a new JPM branch, or a Coinbase wallet holding USDC? Stablecoins are a pure threat to banking system deposits, and by extension, lending: False and False. A lot of the money that goes into stablecoins will end up back at banks. It'll just be in different types of accounts that pay more interest. Stablecoins threaten bank profits, not lending. It's logical to regulate stablecoins as either bank accounts or money market funds: False, and stupid. This is like arguing ChatGPT should be regulated exactly like a search engine, and if that doesn't work, then LLMs should just not be allowed to exist. Stablecoins are a novel product with unique features that require bespoke rules. Narrow banks aren't nearly as dangerous as levered ones, and tokens on a public blockchain are not shares on an exchange. Every single student who takes my class intuitively gets this. I have a hard time believing the CEOs of the biggest banks in America don't. Brian is right, they just want to outlaw competition in a way that hurts consumers and businesses, not to mention innovation and progress. Their approach is deeply un-American.

Big thanks to Senator @JohnBoozman for taking this important step to move market structure legislation forward. We’re still working through the details, but this is a great foundation. We look forward to the markup on Tuesday.

Still wanna believe there’s no crypto voter? That’s certainly a choice, just not an informed one.

For the anti-rewards/yield crowd currently threatening to withhold their support for the CLARITY Act, I would would remind you that tanking the bill over this issue preserves the status quo which you allege is intolerable. You will have achieved nothing. Be reasonable.

1/ This is why we can’t have nice things. It never ceases to amaze me how government can squander progress. In this case, Congress passed the GENIUS Act to foster financial innovation. Now, after false and alarmist bank cries, they’re looking to undo a key part: rewards.

The Senate Banking Committee marks up the Market Structure bill next week, and stablecoin rewards remain under debate. Congress already settled this in GENIUS—reopening it now only creates uncertainty and risks the future of the US Dollar as commerce moves onchain. Here’s why Congress should protect the GENIUS Act, and why rewards help consumers without harming community banks. 1/ 🧵

Exactly - I’m actually impressed the banks can lobby for this with a straight face and not get kicked out of senator’s offices. It takes some serious mental gymnastics. We won’t let anyone reopen GENIUS. Red line issue for us. And will keep advocating for our customers and the crypto industry. My prediction is the banks will actually flip and be lobbying FOR the ability to pay interest and yield on stablecoins in a few years, once they realize how big the opportunity is for them. So it’s 100% wasted effort on their part (in addition to being unethical). The innovators dilemma is undefeated.

It’s sort of a commentary on how far our politics have strayed from practical policy that both parties are having to be reminded that people just want to be able to afford stuff

Fun story - some students outperformed professional financial analysts in a challenge we set leading up to our Q3 earnings. This was a creative way our team designed for us to search for top talent. We set a challenge for students to use our Q2 2025 10-Q and public data to forecast Q3'25 revenue. We got a ton of great entries, and 10 of them landed within 1% of our Q3 results, while the street estimates were off by 3%. And the winner Tyler was only off by 0.06%! Announcing all the winners soon, who get a PS5 Pro and an interview for a new-grad or intern role. Thanks to everyone who took part!