Just before the so-called GENIUS Act passed the Senate June 17, American Banker opinion columnist Claire Williams wrote an article headlined, “Senate stablecoin bill would unleash crypto banks nationwide.” The columnist noted that “a section tucked into the bill after the public markup in the Senate Banking Committee would allow uninsured chartered banks, notably state-chartered special purpose depository institutions, or SPDIs, to operate in states other than those where they are chartered, without the approval of each host state’s banking regulator.”
That is, if the “SPDI” has been formed by the uninsured state bank for the purpose of issuing a crypto stablecoin “currency.”
So, a thousand stablecoin currencies will bloom, each claiming to be backed 1:1 or better with Treasury bills and other “highly liquid assets,” and each claiming to be equal in value to one U.S. dollar. Not only will there be crypto tokens issued by big tech firms like Amazon, big banks like JPMorgan Chase, big retailers like Best Buy and Walmart; there will be stablecoins issued by—just imagine!—uninsured state-chartered banks operating outside their home states without the approval of their host state’s regulators! And then there will be British megabanks and French department store conglomerates, stablecoin specialists headquartered in El Salvador like Tether, Inc., all claiming to issue “stablecoin dollars.”
