Bank of America’s Plan Could Shut Down Coinbase and Tether Stablecoins
Bank of America is lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would give banks an edge in the growing stablecoin market.
The goal: prevent non-bank companies from freely issuing digital dollar-pegged tokens.
The $284 billion financial giant is working with industry groups like the American Bankers Association and the Bank Policy Institute, according to The Block. These efforts are part of a broader push to create a fully reserved, 1:1-backed “Bank of America coin.”
If successful, the campaign could sideline stablecoin projects led by non-bank players like Coinbase, Circle, Tether, Amazon, Meta, and PayPal.
The Stablecoin Power Struggle
Stablecoins like USDC (by Circle) and USDT (by Tether) dominate the market, with market caps of $60 billion and $144 billion, respectively. Bank of America wants in—but only under rules that favor traditional banks.
While Circle is lobbying to protect its own position, Bank of America argues that its offering would be more transparent and fully compliant with U.S. law. That narrative takes aim at competitors like Tether, which has faced regulatory scrutiny in the past.
However, Bank of America’s own history with regulators is far from clean. The bank has been fined for issues including underpaying FDIC insurance, double-charging customers, violating the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and a $16 billion DoJ settlement over financial fraud.
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
