Layer One: Stablecoin leaders converge on Avalanche Summit as Clarity faces key Senate vote

Layer One•September 13, 2026, 10:34PM EDT
UPDATED: September 13, 2026, 10:45PM EDT
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Layer One: Stablecoin leaders converge on Avalanche Summit as Clarity faces key Senate vote
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Welcome to Layer One: the newsletter and podcast on the intersection of crypto and the real world. Hosted by The Block's Kelvin Sparks, Layer One brings you inside the institutional conversations driving blockchain forward.

In our latest episode, we were joined by Guy Young, founder of Ethena Labs, and John Nahas, CBO at Ava Labs, to discuss the launch of Ethena Pay, the evolution of DeFi, and the growing convergence between stablecoins and traditional finance.

In this week’s newsletter, we’re taking a look at how the resurgence of the stablecoin rewards debate could see the Clarity Act pushed back to 2027.

Stablecoin leaders converge on Avalanche Summit as Clarity faces key Senate vote

The Avalanche Summit is set to kick off on Wednesday, September 16, now less than one week away. With The Block announced as an official media partner of the event last week, Layer One host Kelvin Sparks will be on the ground conducting interviews with leading figures in tokenization, traditional finance and enterprise blockchain adoption.

Stablecoins are set to be one major topic of discussion, as the sector approaches its next major inflection point.

Our podcast guest Guy Young, CEO of Ethena Labs, will be sharing the stage with a host of other major players, including Rain CEO Farooq Malik and Bo Hines, CEO of Tether USA₮. Former CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger is also appearing to make the policy case for allowing consumers to earn rewards on stablecoins.

This debate — one of the industry's most consequential since the introduction of the Clarity Act to Congress last year — is now squarely back in the spotlight.

With Congress facing a compressed legislative calendar ahead of November's midterm elections, the window for passing Clarity this year is rapidly narrowing. Polymarket traders currently price the likelihood of the bill passing in 2026 at just 17%, down from a high of 82% in February.
 
And now an imminent cloture vote to advance the bill, scheduled for September 15, has reignited discussions over its future.

Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis has taken to X to argue that her colleagues will “cede the future of finance to China” if protracted debate means they fail to get it over the line. Yet several central points of contention are still far from resolved.

Citi CEO Jane Fraser last month reiterated that the banking lobby has “not given up on pushing to get some improvements made.” Specifically, its position has been that allowing consumers to earn yield on idle stablecoin deposits could drive deposit flight, undermining the U.S. banking industry's ability to service loans. In response to the renewed pressure, Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott conceded that “we're going to have to wrestle that down one more time.”

Mersinger herself, now head of the Blockchain Association, has called the reopening of the debate “discouraging.” She frames the issue as one of basic fair competition, accusing banks of using their legislative weight to stand in the way of innovation that could benefit consumers.
 
They just make enough changes to keep you happy. To keep you from leaving to another bank or another provider or another fintech. [...] They keep giving you this little taste of how much better it could be.
— John Nahas
 

It's an argument that broadly echoes one made by Ava Labs' John Nahas on Layer One last week. Nahas portrayed legacy financial services as a patchwork of decades-old systems that are incrementally improved just enough to keep customers from leaving, rather than rebuilt around what newer technology can offer.

Young's pitch for Ethena Pay is, in many ways, the other side of that argument. Rather than simply offering consumers a marginally better version of the same financial products, the goal is to use stablecoin rails to offer a better experience for everyday spenders and savers.

Whether the U.S. government chooses to help or hinder that mission could become clearer by the time Young, Nahas and Mersinger take to the stage next week.

Podcast Catch-up: Inside Ethena's new neobank built exclusively on AVAX

Last week on the podcast, we were joined by Guy Young, founder of Ethena Labs, and John Nahas, CBO at Ava Labs, to discuss the DeFi revival, the launch of Ethena Pay, and how blockchain protocols are restructuring their revenue systems to capture more value in their native tokens.

Subscribe to Layer One on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the Headlines: The stories driving the conversation this week

  • Visa’s stablecoin settlement volume has surged to an annualized run rate of more than $20 billion, marking a more than 15-fold increase year over year. More than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs were live globally in its fiscal second quarter, with payment volume across them up nearly 200%. The payments giant has been steadily expanding its stablecoin infrastructure, adding support for more tokens and blockchains as it looks to bridge stablecoins with its existing global payments network.
  • South Korean brokerage Hanwha Investment & Securities has built a tokenized securities platform on Avalanche. Developed alongside FairSquare Lab, the platform arrives ahead of new rules taking effect next February that will formally bring tokenized securities into South Korea’s financial system. Hanwha Group itself is a frontrunner in this trend — it owns a 9.6% stake in tokenization giant Securitize, making it the largest shareholder, and invested $22.3 million in Digital Asset in July.
  • U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs pulled in $987 million last week, extending their run of positive flows to three consecutive weeks. BlackRock’s IBIT led the charge with $691.5 million, while spot ether ETFs added another $218.4 million. The renewed institutional demand coincided with a broader market rebound, with crypto market capitalization briefly climbing to around $2.82 trillion during the week.

Top of the Charts: USDe supply sits just below $4.5 billion, making it the fifth-largest stablecoin by value

Keep up with the latest in tokenization, DeFi, and institutional adoption by subscribing to Layer One's weekly market insights.

Layer One is brought to you in collaboration with Avalanche.