Big banks vs. digital dollars: Op-Ed

On Jan. 1, 2026, China made its digital yuan interest-bearing. Fourteen days later, the U.S. Senate postponed a critical vote on whether digital dollars can pay interest, too. This American hesitation feints at unilateral financial disarmament. China is weaponizing its currency to attract global capital while the U.S. is captured by its capitalists. Wall Street paralyzed the Senate over a simple question: Should digital dollar holders earn interest? Big banks say no because yield-bearing digital dollars compete with bank deposits. If customers can earn real returns by holding stablecoins, they stop parking money in bank accounts that pay almost nothing. Banks lose their cheapest source of funding. So banks want Congress to add Section 404 to the CLARITY Act and ban anyone from paying interest to stablecoin users, thus preserving the banking monopoly on low-cost deposits. Section 404 doesn’t just transfer wealth from ordinary Americans to the big banks. It also breaks the basis for cryp