Remember the Clarity Act? The crypto regulation bill that was supposed to help the industry? Well, a new draft dropped this week, and it contained a nasty surprise: a proposed ban on passive stablecoin yield.

Translation: if you've been earning rewards just for holding USDC, that might not be legal under the new rules.

The market did not take it well.

Circle stock plunged 20% on Tuesday, its worst day since going public in June 2025. Coinbase got dragged down nearly 10% too, since roughly a fifth of its quarterly revenue comes from its USDC distribution deal with Circle.

Here's the ironic part: the "compromise" text that was supposed to unblock the bill ended up spooking the market harder than the original stalemate. The new language would prohibit platforms from offering yield "directly or indirectly" for holding a stablecoin in a way that resembles a bank deposit. Essentially, Congress is drawing a hard line: stablecoins can be money, but they can't act like savings accounts.

Some analysts think the selloff was overdone. Bitwise's CIO still projects Circle hitting a $75B valuation by 2030. But for now, the chart is ugly and the vibes are nervous.

Oh, and to make things worse for Circle: Tether announced this week that it's hiring a Big Four accounting firm for its first-ever independent audit. So while Circle is bleeding out on the regulatory front, its biggest rival just leveled up on the trust front 😬

If you told us five years ago that you'd be able to buy Dogecoin through a Walmart-owned app, we'd have asked what you were smoking. But here we are.

Walmart's majority-owned fintech app, OnePay, just added 10 new cryptos to its platform, bringing the total to 12. The new additions include SOL, DOGE, SHIB, XRP, ADA, LINK, BCH, DOT, UNI, and PAXG, alongside the BTC and ETH that were already available.

That means over 3 million monthly active users can now buy, sell, and hold crypto in the same app they use for groceries, bill pay, and money transfers.

Now, before you get too excited: you can't actually pay for a rotisserie chicken with Dogecoin at checkout. You buy crypto, it sits in your OnePay account, you sell it when you want, and the cash lands in your balance. It's more "Robinhood for Walmart shoppers" than "crypto payments at the register."

But still, this is Walmart. The company that serves 150 million weekly U.S. shoppers. Even if only a fraction of OnePay users touch crypto, that's a massive distribution channel for coins like SOL and DOGE that traditional brokerages still won't list.

Mainstream adoption with an asterisk? Sure. But we'll take the asterisk.

Every cycle has that story, the one that makes you question whether we're living in a simulation. This week, it's NovaBay Pharmaceuticals.

NovaBay, formerly known for making antimicrobial eyedrops, announced that it's changing its name to Stablecoin Development Corporation and switching its NYSE ticker to SDEV. Trading under the new name starts April 3.

The pivot isn't just cosmetic, either. After raising $134 million from investors including Framework Ventures and Tether Investments (yes, that Tether), the company acquired 2.06B SKY tokens worth ~$150M, which is roughly 8.78% of the total SKY supply. They've already earned 26.6 million SKY tokens in staking rewards.

The stock jumped 19% on the news, because of course it did. Nothing says "sound investment thesis" like an eye care company rebranding as an on-chain holding company.

To be fair, this isn't entirely unprecedented. MicroStrategy basically wrote the playbook for the "public company becomes a crypto treasury" strategy. But going from eyedrops to DeFi staking is… a new one.

We have questions. Many questions. But hey, at least someone's bullish.

Our parent company Invested Inc. is launching a new podcast called Owners Only, all about how some of the biggest content creators out there are building their followings into fully functioning businesses.

The first guest? Zach Justice.

We really appreciate you reading our newsletter, and we’d love to hear your feedback.

What a week. The Clarity Act went from "crypto's best friend" to "Circle's worst nightmare" in a single draft revision. Walmart’s app is maybe onboarding normies into Dogecoin. And a pharma company just decided staking SKY tokens was a better business than selling eyedrops…

Meanwhile, Bitcoin can't decide if it wants to hold $70K or not, and the macro backdrop (the Iran situation, oil prices, a stubborn Fed) isn't making things any easier.

But if there's one takeaway from this week, it's this: crypto is getting weirder, and that usually means it's getting more interesting at least.

Same time next week? Sounds good.

Until next time,
- The Chain Team

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