đŸ„Š Banks vs Crypto, another round.

Stablecoin rewards return to the Senate floor. PLUS: Bitcoin breaks $96K, Ethereum onboarding surges, silver flips Nvidia, Wall Street reprices the chip cycle, and central banks quietly test crypto.

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Cryptopolitan News
January 14, 2026 ‱ Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

đŸ›ïž Stablecoin rewards again in the crosshairs

The U.S Senate is gearing up to discuss a broad-reaching bi-partisan crypto bill this Thursday, but looming over the conversation is a fresh storm of controversy over stablecoin rewards.

The latest “negotiated market structure bill,” filed by Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott, seeks to control the terms of stablecoin incentives. Think of it as: The core idea will be that no interest will be given to holders of stablecoins, but use-based rewards to such holders such as staking, payments or providing liquidity are still allowed.

Think of it as:

  • Passive earning = blocked

  • Active use = still okay

🧠 Quick explainer:

Stablecoin savings rewards (aka Yield): Some crypto platforms provide users with a low yield in exchange for holding their stablecoins (typically paid by lending out those assets). Banks hate this. Why? Because it so resembles an interest-bearing account, minus bank-level regulation.

The flashpoint

This latest compromise was put into shape by weeks of negotiations between members and TradFi lobbyists as well as crypto companies, particularly once fears erupted about the GENIUS Act (passed July 2025), which left doors open for platforms to bypass interest laws.

But one of the bill’s lead sponsors, Senator Angela Alsobrooks, defined a middle ground:

Platforms may reward users who do something with their stablecoins (like selling or transacting), but not for merely holding them in an idle account.

Banks claim that this “loophole” continues to present a system-wide risk. Crypto firms claim that banks want to simply kill the competition.

Coinbase fires warning shot

Coinbase, which has offered stablecoin rewards for some time, said it could pull support for the bill if lawmakers go beyond transparency to punitive restrictions. Other crypto firms concur, they say this was never meant to be up for debate again.

So, what’s at stake?

If this bill becomes law as is, it could reshape stablecoin economics in the U.S. with implications for how platforms acquire users, how DeFi lending operates and who gets to control the rails for stablecoins.

The CFTC would also have more oversight ability, which could lead to future ETF-style structures and institutional use of tokenized dollars.

đŸȘ™ Cryptopolitan’s take

This is not simply a semantic battle over “interest” vs. “rewards.” It’s a battle between who gets to build the future of financial infrastructure: traditional banks, or crypto-native platforms. And it’s one of the most visible indications that stablecoins are growing up to become political infrastructure.

POLL: Should stablecoin grants be restricted simply to activity, or would that also be too restrictive?

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📊 Market Watch

📈 Bitcoin breaks $96k, Silver pass Nvidia?

Bitcoin rose by 2.4% to $96,348, to its highest since mid-November, finally breaking out of a weeks-long range. Ether was running hotter, with the 5.1% intraday move, while tokenized stocks hit $800M in monthly volume thanks to Jupiter Exchange leading the way.

But the metal shocker was in metal: silver broke $90/oz and its market cap now tops Nvidia. Gold and copper print ATHs.

Macro rotation is getting louder.

🧠 Wall Street reprices the chip cycle

Analysts are lifting targets on Micron, Intel, and AMD as earnings kick off.

Memory prices are increasing, server CPUs have built to backlog into 2026 and foundry yields are getting better. Micron alone is up +264% YoY as Intel and AMD both are considering price hikes due to supply constraints.

🏩 JPMorgan stumbles, trading desks shine

JPMorgan Chase fell short in Q4 earnings and was greeted with a 4%+ sell off after taking $2.2B charge for Apple Card risks.

Revenue still rose 7%, and the trading desks did their jobs: equities were up 40% year on year. Consumer spending remained strong, delinquencies continued to tick down, but dealmaking disappointed.

Big banks are making money, just not the way they wanted.

 đŸ‘€ Are you watching this?

Ethereum just had its best day ever in terms of new addresses created, nearly 394,000 overnight.

This surge follows a protocol upgrade in December (Fusaka), which cut Layer 2 data costs, and as such made the network more efficient. And with gas fees now close to zero, it has become cheaper to transact, build and experiment on-chain.

On-chain stablecoin transactions just reached $8 trillion and new wallets implying more onboarding users especially in DeFi, NFTs and gaming.

DEX volume and implied volatility is dead, yet infrastructure and user growth beg to differ: Ethereum is quietly onboarding the next wave.

 đŸ„ Top tweets

👀 Narrative watch

The Czech National Bank is now the first central bank in the world to purchase Bitcoin directly, among other investment tools, which include BTC, a USD stablecoin and a tokenized deposit, as part of an initial $1M “test portfolio”.

With U.S. debt on the rise and a weaker dollar, central banks are searching for alternatives. Brazil, Taiwan and the Philippines are already mulling such measures. The U.S. plans a strategic Bitcoin reserve, but the Fed still says no.

POLL: What do you think?

Should central banks buy Bitcoin

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