Some community banks are suggesting stablecoins are driving deposit flight. The data says otherwise: BofA shows household deposits rising across income groups this year, and the FDIC reports domestic deposits grew for a seventh straight quarter. Community banks actually outperformed the industry, posting 5% deposit growth. If the worry is the Clarity Act compromise itself, that’s backwards. Section 404 bars stablecoin issuers from paying anything that functions like interest, even disguised as rewards or points, and bans marketing stablecoins as deposits or FDIC-insured. It’s actually tougher than current law, not looser. The real story behind closing community banks isn’t stablecoins. It’s consolidation: 2,000 community banks lost in a decade, only 62 new ones formed, and the buyers are super regional banks, not crypto companies. The Banking Committee already built a nine-provision community bank package into the housing bill to help with deposit retention, on top of tightening stablecoin yield rules under Clarity. Killing the Clarity Act won’t help community banks. It just protects the status quo they say is broken.(Senator Cynthia Lummis)