In the global race to digital market dominance, Washington’s competitors are gaining speed.
This September, Russia will launch its digital ruble, a state-controlled currency intended to facilitate trade beyond the reach of Western sanctions. China has already acted. On Jan. 1, Beijing upgraded its digital yuan from a cash substitute to an interest-bearing “digital deposit currency,” directly competing with the stablecoins it has banned domestically.
Together, these two adversaries are building the financial architecture for a post-dollar world.
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The United States is currently underperforming in a critical area where it stands to gain or lose the most. Unlike China’s e-CNY or Russia’s digital ruble, U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins are private, market-driven, and globally portable. They extend dollar dominance without state control and offer the world a choice, rather than an imposed alternative.
This competitive advantage is strong, but it depends on Washington’s framework to enable the growth — a framework laid out in the Clarity Act, now stuck in Congress.
Washington lawmakers are stuck in a stalemate over whether cryptocurrency firms can offer rewards to users for holding stablecoins. Banks contend that rewards on stablecoin holdings are similar to bank deposits and could undermine traditional lending. Crypto firms say that rewards incentivize consumer adoption of dollar-backed digital infrastructure, which helps maintain the dollar’s global position. Every moment legislators spend negotiating the market structure, Washington is losing ground in the global race for digital markets.
The White House understands the global and domestic significance of crypto policy. It’s been a year since the Trump administration began treating crypto as a national security priority, issuing an executive order to revoke the 2022 Biden-era order that created regulatory barriers and stifled innovation in the U.S. The subsequent passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act established a comprehensive strategy for regulating payment stablecoins, setting standards for how they are offered, backed and kept safe for users.
Banks, fintechs, and global firms now have the regulatory certainty they need to build real-world use cases such as retail payments and crossborder commerce. Meanwhile, stablecoins are becoming a more coherent part of payments infrastructure: as simple as swiping a card or using Apple Pay, but with faster settlement time, lower fees, and dollar stability.
But progress on market structure legislation has stalled over concerns related to competition between banks and crypto firms. After three high-level meetings between the banking and crypto industries, the White House brokered a workable compromise. Crypto adviser Patrick Witt’s team proposed that rewards tied to stablecoin activity are permissible, but rewards for holding stablecoins are not. Sens. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) formalized this framework in compromise language introduced in March.
Neither side is fully satisfied: The crypto industry says the text is too narrow and unclear, while bankers have not fully agreed. The Senate banking committee has yet to schedule a markup to advance the bill.
This stall has risked jobs, innovation, and infrastructure to move to foreign markets. Without decisive action on market structure legislation the U.S. risks losing the very leadership the executive order was meant to secure — to foreign adversaries.
With 2026 as a midterm election year, the Senate’s window for effective policymaking closes at the end of July. Each week spent debating the definition of a rewards program allows China to expand mBridge and Russia to advance its digital ruble initiatives.
China’s e-CNY has surpassed $2.3 trillion in cumulative transactions and is the foundation for Project mBridge, a crossborder payment network to route trade outside the Western controlled SWIFT system. Russia’s digital ruble is now being integrated into government salaries and federal budget payments, with a mandatory retail rollout scheduled for later this year.
Nearly 90% of Russia-China bilateral trade is now settled in rubles and yuan over the dollar, showcasing that the infrastructure for a parallel financial system is already being built and established, transaction by transaction.
Both countries have made their intentions explicit. Russia is developing its CBDC to resist Western sanctions, while China is expanding the yuan’s global influence offering an alternative to dollar-based settlements. These initiatives go beyond payment modernization projects.
They are geopolitical tools, and Washington has been slow to recognize the competitive landscape.
Analysts also warn that the absence of the Clarity Act is inducing a consistent regulatory risk premium on U.S. crypto markets, capping valuation growth and pushing capital toward Bitcoin and infrastructure while leaving exchanges and the application layer innovation constrained.
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Establishing market structure legislation is not about being “pro-crypto.” It is about supporting the dollar, upholding the rule of law, and recognizing the global competition already in progress. If Washington continues to stall market structure, the U.S. will wake up to a digital asset economy shaped by foreign standards.
The administration has already shown it can act decisively. The question now is whether it will finish what it started before its rivals do.
Emily Vartuhi Ekshian is a Young Voices contributor based in Washington, D.C. She is a graduate of the Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism MS program. Emily is interested in reporting on the emerging technologies sector, such as digital asset policy, blockchain, AI and tech use-cases for public good.