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This is a guest opinion column Over the years, I’ve seen firsthand how much our local banks mean to a community. Here in Opelika and across Lee County, they’ve helped families buy homes, small businesses get started, and farmers make it through tough seasons. When our community banks are strong, our towns are strong. That’s why I’m worried about a new federal law called the GENIUS Act. It was meant to bring some order to the fast-moving world of digital payments, but there’s a loophole in the law that could end up hurting community banks — the very institutions that keep small-town economies like ours running. Here’s what’s happening. The GENIUS Act sets new rules for companies that issue something called stablecoins — a type of digital currency that’s supposed to keep a steady value. The law says those companies can’t pay interest directly to customers. That’s good. But it doesn’t clearly stop crypto platforms — the apps and exchanges people use to buy these coins — from offering “rewards” or extra payments to customers who move their money out of local banks and into digital accounts. That might sound harmless, but it gives crypto companies a big advantage over traditional community banks. They can promise higher returns, which encourages folks to pull their deposits out of their local bank and move them into online platforms that don’t have the same guardrails or protections. Unlike your neighborhood bank, those crypto accounts aren’t insured by the FDIC — so if the company collapses, your money is gone. If local banks lose deposits, it affects everyone. Those deposits are what banks use to make loans — for homes, for tractors, for business expansions, for all the things that keep a local economy moving. A recent study estimated that if deposits leave banks for these digital platforms, there could be $62 billion less nationwide for farm lending. That’s a big deal for Alabama, where agriculture and small business are still at the heart of our economy. Community banks know their customers. They know the people who run the hardware store downtown, the restaurant owners on the square, and the young couple saving up to buy their first home. Once deposits start leaving those banks, they don’t come back easily — and that can take years to recover from. Congress needs to fix this before it gets worse. I encourage Senator Katie Britt and her colleagues on the Senate Banking Committee to make sure small towns, and rural areas aren’t left behind in the rush to regulate digital assets. Here in East Alabama, we depend on our local banks — and they’ve always been there when we needed them. It’s time we make sure the playing field stays fair, so they can keep doing what they do best: serving our people and strengthening our communities.
