Here's a simple fact that should dispel every myth about stablecoins being a threat to bank lending: American banks make more than $700 billion in net interest income last year. That's the profit they made from paying little interest on deposits but not passing those savings to borrowers and instead booking it as profit. It's also more than than the Mag7 made in net income Nobody in their right might could imagine Nvidia or Amazon lobbying for protectionism. But a sector that earns even more does just that, all at the expense of innovation and progress.

What is this obsession that so many economic and cultural elites have with defending the status of quo of banking, come hell or high net-interest margins? It's the most baffling mind virus of finance. Here we have an archaic industry that charges monopoly rents while blowing itself up every few years and demanding a bailout. It then thanks the Americans who rescued it by paying no interest on their savings but charging them 20% for a credit card loan. And god forbid someone wats to send a wire on Sunday! And yet so much of the rest of American society is nearly obsessed with preserving this structure. Case in point the WSJ editorial board has now doubled down on its absurd Clarity critic. They really think a grandfather who still struggles to use email is going to move all his savings from the First Bank of Omaha to stablecoins on a crypto exchange so he can get ancillary crypto-related perks. I'm not kidding: This language would let crypto exchanges offer stablecoin holders cash back, rebates and other perks as long as they are not exclusively based on a user’s stablecoin holdings. An exchange could, say, offer 5% cash back to stablecoin holders who sign up for a loyalty program and keep a monthly balance of at least $1. Their argument doesn't even work mathematically. What deposits are threatened if participation in rewards requires just $1? Oh and they end it with the nonsensical trope that stablecoins should be regulated like banks, even though they are different in every way. I thought I knew about recency and status quo bias, but the extent to which otherwise intelligent people who don't have a financial dog in this fight go to oppose change shocks me.