Bond yields hitting highs & European backlash on stablecoin reward bans

Episode 45 of The Starting Block, hosted by The Block's Gareth Jenkinson, was broadcasted live with Coinbase Head of Policy for Europe Katie Harries.

Key topics
• US Clarity Act stalled in Senate despite broad bipartisan House support.
• Stand With Crypto has over 4 million global advocates across six countries.
• UK banks blocking transfers to FCA-registered crypto exchanges, new campaign launched.
• EU MiCA review is a chance to unlock stablecoin rewards and boost euro adoption.
• André Dragosch sees Fed pause weeks away, Bitcoin target at $92K next resistance.

Outline

00:00 - Introduction
01:27 - The Block Briefing
05:49 - Market Pulse: Bond Yields & Bitcoin
10:44 - Q4 Outlook
16:01 - The Hot Seat: US Clarity Act
22:10 - Stand With Crypto UK & Bank Blocks
30:22 - MiCA Review & Stablecoin Rewards

Coinbase Head of Policy for Europe Katie Harries joins Gareth Jenkinson on The Starting Block to discuss the stalling of the US Clarity Act, the Stand With Crypto movement's growth in the UK and EU, and the campaign to unlock stablecoin rewards under MiCA.

The Block Briefing opened with news that Lloyds and Visa completed a seven-day live pilot settling $750,000 in USDC in under an hour, including over weekends, marking what Lloyds called the first stablecoin settlement trial between Visa and a major UK banking group. Standard Chartered initiated coverage on Ethena with a $2 price target on its ENA token by end of 2028, implying over 600% upside from current levels around 26 cents, premised on USDE stablecoin supply growing from under $5 billion to roughly $40 billion. The briefing also covered the White House reviewing two CFTC proposed rules that would expand the definition of a swap to include event contracts, affecting platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, and the FCA opening its authorization gateway for UK crypto firms ahead of a new regime taking effect in October 2027, with a February application deadline. Coinbase's Base network went live with its Cobalt upgrade, introducing validity transactions that only execute when preset conditions are met before a given block.

In the Market Pulse segment, André Dragosch of Bitwise Europe framed the surge in global bond yields as a collision between easy fiscal policy and tightening monetary policy. He noted the MOVE index — the implied volatility gauge for Treasury bonds — hit its highest level since the 2025 tariff tantrum, and that most S&P 500 constituents are already in bear-market territory below their 200-day moving averages. His base case is that a Fed pause or pivot is weeks, not months, away, and that once both fiscal and monetary policy ease simultaneously, Bitcoin enters full bull-market mode. He flagged Bitcoin's correlation with the S&P 500 at its lowest since 2015, called out $92K as the next major resistance level, but said he expects a consolidation back toward the true-market-mean around $75K before the rally resumes.

In the Hot Seat, Katie Harries said the Clarity Act advanced further than anyone expected — passing the House with roughly 78 Democrats joining Republicans — but ultimately failed to reach the 60 Senate votes needed for cloture, blocked in her view by legacy financial institutions. She said Coinbase expects regulatory clarity to come through SEC and CFTC rulemaking regardless, pointing to the SEC's recent innovation exemption enabling tokenized equities in DeFi environments. On Stand With Crypto, she noted the movement now has over 3 million US advocates and 4 million globally, with 300,000 in the UK alone — more than any UK political party's membership. A current UK campaign targets bank blocks preventing customers from moving funds to FCA-registered crypto exchanges. On the EU, Harries said Stand With Crypto EU's 50,000 respondents to the MiCA 2 Commission consultation are primarily pushing to unlock stablecoin rewards, which she argued is the key lever for driving euro-denominated stablecoin adoption and keeping the EU competitive against US dollar-backed stablecoins.

About the guest
Katie Harries is Head of Policy for Europe at Coinbase, the publicly listed US cryptocurrency exchange, where she leads regulatory and policy engagement across the UK, EU, and broader international markets.