#创作者冲榜 SEC issued a get-out-of-jail-free card, but Bitcoin is playing dead: The "yield rights" meat grinder between Wall Street and crypto upstarts

Retail investors in the crypto space must have felt extremely surreal these past few days. In mid-March 2026, the US SEC and CFTC rarely aligned, issuing that "token classification guidance" the entire industry had begged for over eight years. New SEC Chair Paul Atkins made sweeping changes, dividing crypto assets into five major categories, and openly declared to the world: the vast majority of cryptocurrencies are simply not securities. This was equivalent to issuing a get-out-of-jail-free card to Web3 practitioners who had been brutally crushed by Gary Gensler over the past few years.

According to the script, Bitcoin should have immediately performed a dramatic rally, surging straight toward $100,000. Reality, however, was different. Bitcoin, like an old man with an enlarged prostate in front of the $75,000 resistance level, not only showed no volatility, but even broke through the $70,000 mark downward.

SEC's "five classifications" are nothing more than a paper towel; the real prey is on the flip side of the ledger

Don't get excited about SEC's five categories (digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital utilities, stablecoins, digital securities). This is at most a tissue used by regulatory agencies after a change in administration to wipe away the vomit left by violent enforcement from the previous era. Wall Street's top predators and Silicon Valley's tech elites don't care one bit whether Dogecoin counts as a commodity or as hot air. In their eyes, there is only one real prey that can print money: the underlying liquidity of stablecoins.

The logic of market voting with one's feet is cold and clear. A reduction in compliance costs can certainly help exchanges pay fewer fines, but it cannot conjure profits out of thin air.

When the Federal Reserve's rate expectations are firmly stuck in the 3.5% to 3.75% range, when the shadow of Iran's war sends crude oil prices soaring, smart money has long seen through the bottom cards of this policy show. Large capital is frantically withdrawing from high-risk assets like Bitcoin and pouring into digital dollars. Because in an era when rate-cutting cycles have been indefinitely postponed, whoever controls the digital distribution rights of dollars controls the tax collection rights of the new financial empire.

This is why the Clarity Act, the legislation that truly determines the underlying architecture of the crypto market, still lies in the Senate Banking Committee's morgue like a corpse. Senator Cynthia Lummis claims there will be progress by late April next year, but this politician's reassurance reeks of falsehood even in its punctuation marks.

The bill's impasse is fundamentally not due to partisan disagreements on technical matters, but because Wall Street's century-old banks and Coinbase-like crypto upstarts are engaged in a bloody hand-to-hand combat in the backrooms of Capitol Hill over "stablecoin yield rights."

"Yield distribution" is the original sin: The meat grinder between Wall Street's old dogs and Web3 gamblers

Let's expose the business model of stablecoins completely. You hand over real US dollars to a stablecoin issuer, and they give you a string of code. Then they turn around with your money to buy US Treasury bonds, steadily pocketing that 3-4% risk-free yield. This is an almost cost-free, profits-guaranteed ultra-profitable business. Coinbase alone earns tens of billions of dollars annually just by lying back and cashing in on this "yield moat." Now, scale this logic to the entire US financial market.

Why can banks call the shots on Wall Street? Because they have locked down deposit interest rate spreads. If the Clarity Act grants stablecoin issuers legal status and allows them to directly pay interest to retail holders of stablecoins (the so-called Rewards Loophole), what do you think will happen?

This is the end times for traditional banking. Why would an ordinary person keep money in JPMorgan Chase's current account with less than 1% annual yield? They could easily convert all their money to compliant stablecoins, keep them in a mobile wallet, and not only enjoy second-level cross-border transfers, but also watch 4% annual interest accrue daily. Once this Pandora's box is opened, the savings pools of traditional banks will be completely drained within months. So the banking system got desperate.

The banking industry's lobbying groups threw massive money at Congress, holding firm to one bottom line: stablecoins absolutely cannot distribute yield, unless the issuer applies to become a fully regulated traditional bank. This is like when the automobile industry was born, the horse-drawn carriage drivers' union strongly demanded that all automobiles must be equipped with a horse to be allowed on the road. This isn't about discussing financial innovation; it's about defending class interests.

Coinbase and others face a multi-billion dollar compliance deadlock: either hand over yield distribution rights, or never get legal status. As long as this machinery of competing interests keeps running, Bitcoin, no matter how deflationary, can only wallow in the $70,000 mud.

Traditional finance's "if you can't beat them, buy them": Mastercard drops $1.8 billion in a closed-loop conspiracy

While politicians and crypto fundamentalists still bicker over the naming rights to yield distribution, the real old money has already started bargain hunting at the physical layer. Look at what Mastercard just did. $1.8 billion, directly acquiring BVNK, the UK-based stablecoin infrastructure company. This deal even exceeded the century-old deal when Stripe bought Bridge for $1.1 billion. There's one very interesting detail: BVNK was almost acquired by Coinbase for $2 billion before this. Why did that deal fall through? Why did Mastercard ultimately take over?

Because for crypto companies, buying infrastructure is about growing the ecosystem; but for payment giants like Mastercard, buying infrastructure is about buying survival. Mastercard knows better than anyone that the global card network it has operated for fifty years is essentially just an information delivery system. Transaction authorization must be completed in milliseconds, but fund settlement has to crawl along on another slow traditional banking track for days. While enterprises like BVNK have processed $30 billion in stablecoin payments across 130+ countries over the past year. This is a dimensional strike. When B2B cross-border payments begin to get used to second-level settlement and minimal slippage with USDC and USDT, traditional remittance channels become rusty artifacts.

Wall Street's conspiracy has been completely exposed. They don't want to spend more time understanding the hacker spirit of blockchain; they choose to directly buy out the toll booths on the highway. Regulators drive the crypto barbarians into the fence with compliance sticks in front, while traditional giants buy out all core infrastructure with checkbooks in back. No matter how the Clarity Act ultimately rules on the attribution of yield, as long as capital keeps flowing through the digital dollar pipeline, Mastercard and others can continue extracting their cut smoothly. This $1.8 billion acquisition not only buys out the future of technology, but also buys out the anarcho-capitalists' delusions of overthrowing traditional finance.

The endgame before the rate cut: Not sharing money with retail investors is the only consensus of the privileged

Once you see through this game, you understand why the crypto market's reaction to SEC's classification guidelines was so lukewarm. Because the entire industry has transitioned from the "survival" wild west era into the "carving up the cake" oligarch era. Balance sheets don't lie. Venus protocol crashes due to exploits, crypto platforms lay off 12% and introduce AI to cut costs and increase efficiency, Bitcoin's OG holders cash out over $100 million after dumping when the favorable news lands.

When the macroeconomic sickle of deflation hangs high because inflation won't come down, no institution is willing to pay for the ethereal decentralization faith. What they want is real, hard US dollar cash flow. The Clarity Act will definitely pass eventually, but definitely not in a way that benefits retail investors. After several rounds of mutual spitting and backroom dealing, Wall Street's banking magnates and Web3's top-tier exchanges will inevitably reach a dirty and perfect compromise: the underlying protocol must be compliant, interest income will be layer-by-layer legitimately intercepted by institutions, and as the price, retail investors will receive an incredibly smooth, completely integrated-into-daily-life stablecoin payment experience.

In this final battle over digital dollar liquidity, the SEC is responsible for issuing permits, Congress is responsible for distributing profits, and traditional payment giants are responsible for laying down pipes. As for you and me who contributed all the real money in this closed loop, our only role is to continue being a quiet burning battery in this brand new, repackaged as Web3 revolution digital financial matrix.