Seven Republican senators have thrown their weight behind a Senate measure that would sharply narrow the rewards digital-asset companies may pay to stablecoin holders — a group that includes anyone earning yield on networks such as Sui (SUI).

Senator Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, filed the measure as an amendment to the CLARITY Act, the comprehensive digital-asset market bill now advancing through the upper chamber. More than a dozen lawmakers have since signed on as co-sponsors, half of them Republicans, according to Punchbowl News. The Republican side counts Susan Collins, Cindy Hyde-Smith, John Curtis, John Cornyn, Lisa Murkowski and Josh Hawley; with Moran himself included, seven GOP senators now stand behind the text.

Entered into the congressional record as Senate Amendment 6771 (SA 6771), the proposal tightens the standard governing stablecoin payouts. The underlying bill barred rewards that are "economically or functionally equivalent" to interest on a bank deposit; Moran would replace that wording with the stricter test of being "substantially similar" to how banks pay interest or returns. He would also delete the word "solely" from the clause prohibiting rewards for merely holding a stablecoin, and strike an exception that had allowed rewards to be calculated on balance size or holding period.

Taken together, the edits lower the threshold for what counts as regulated yield. Compensation structured around conditions such as trading volume or service usage — even where it ends up resembling deposit interest — could be swept into scope.

For Sui (SUI), a proof-of-stake chain whose stablecoin balances commonly earn returns through lending venues — where users' coins are lent out to borrowers — and automated market maker pools, which pool user-supplied assets for traders to swap against, the distinction is direct. The amendment names no blockchain, but yield programs on any network a US digital-asset company touches would fall under the same pen.

The Banking Lobby's Fingerprints

The American Bankers Association, the country's largest bank trade group, and allied bank groups have argued that the original CLARITY Act left digital-asset companies room to dangle stablecoin rewards under the fig leaf of a transaction or activity. They pressed for precisely the deletions SA 6771 now carries — above all, removal of the exception for rewards keyed to balance size or holding period.

The banks' underlying concern is deposit flight: if stablecoins function as deposit substitutes, regional lenders lose the deposit base — and the lending capacity built on it. That funding argument is what pushed the payout question to the top of the Senate's crypto agenda.

The digital-asset industry reads the same clauses in the opposite direction. Its representatives have cautioned that a broad restriction could reach rewards tied to genuine service use — trading, payments, settlement — and that sweeping rules would restrain competition rather than protect users. Their worry, in plain terms, is that the language could be read to capture almost any incentive a protocol attaches to a stable balance.

That collision is why stablecoin yield rules look set to re-emerge as a central bargaining point if and when the bill returns to the Senate floor. Senators on both sides now treat the payout question as one of the last structural disagreements standing between the bill and floor action.

Concrete Stakes for Sui

For Sui and other ecosystems with active stablecoin economies, the stakes are concrete rather than abstract. Full Sail, a Sui (SUI) DeFi protocol, recently wound down after a $91,000 oracle vault drain, and the sector's reward mechanisms now sit directly inside the argument this amendment would settle.

SUI's spot price moved roughly 14% over the past 24 hours as the amendment circulated — a reminder that policy drafts can move the token even before any text names the chain.

Where the Yield Ban Stops

SA 6771, published in the congressional record, remains a proposal rather than enacted law: it would amend the CLARITY Act's yield provisions, but its stricter language would take effect only if the Senate adopts it and the bill is enacted — and so far it has passed neither chamber and carries no effective date.

As drafted, it binds digital-asset companies — issuers, exchanges and custodians — that pay rewards to stablecoin holders. That is also where the measure stops. Conventional deposit interest paid by the banks the American Bankers Association represents sits outside the restriction entirely — the very product the amendment shields from stablecoin competition.

The same boundary-drawing echoes the wider policy debate over a central bank digital currency (CBDC), where deposit-like instruments outside the banking system remain the flashpoint.