The rules that decide which crypto yield you are allowed to earn

Crypto yield regulation is not one rulebook. In the United States it is a stablecoin statute that binds issuers, a proposed banking rule that would reach further, a set of agency interpretations about staking, and a market-structure bill that has not passed. In the European Union it is a single regulation with a prohibition attached and a review under way. In the United Kingdom it is a statutory instrument that removed one problem and a policy statement whose start date has not been fixed. This page reports what each instrument says, who it binds, and what is still open. It does not predict what happens next, and it is not legal advice.

The order below follows the money. First the stablecoin rules, because that is where a prohibition on paying yield actually exists. Then staking, where the US position has moved several times and now rests on interpretation rather than statute. Then the European and UK positions, which reach the same activities by different routes.

The United States: a statute for issuers, an interpretation for everything else

The GENIUS Act, enacted in July 2025, contains the only hard prohibition on paying yield in US law. Section 4(a)(11) stops permitted payment stablecoin issuers from paying any form of interest or yield — whether in cash, tokens or other consideration — solely in connection with the holding, use or retention of a payment stablecoin. The scope of that sentence is narrow in one specific way: it binds issuers. It does not mention affiliates or unaffiliated third parties.

That silence is doing a great deal of work in the market. Platforms that pay customers for holding a stablecoin balance characterise the payment as a platform reward funded out of the platform's own resources, rather than as interest paid by the issuer. On the statute as written, that is a coherent reading. The question is whether the implementing rules will accept it.

In February 2026 the OCC issued a 376-page notice of proposed rulemaking covering reserves, redemption, liquidity, risk management, audits, custody and wind-down. The provision that matters here is proposed §15.10(c)(4), which would create a rebuttable presumption of violation where an issuer has any contract with affiliates or "related third parties" — a term drafted expansively enough to cover any person offering yield as a service and any entity for which stablecoins are issued under its own branding. If finalised as proposed, a platform running a rewards programme on a branded stablecoin would carry the burden of proving that the arrangement is not a circumvention of the statutory prohibition.

The timetable is specific and public. The comment period closed on 1 May 2026. Comptroller Jonathan Gould has stated an intent to get a final rule out by November 2026 so that applications can be processed within the new year. GENIUS itself becomes effective on the earlier of 18 January 2027 or 120 days after final implementing rules. The FDIC published a companion rulemaking for the institutions it supervises on 10 April 2026. Regulators have already passed the statutory one-year rulemaking deadline. Those are the dates; what the final text says is not knowable from here.

Staking in the United States: three interpretations, no statute

The US position on staking has moved from enforcement to permission without any legislation being passed, which is precisely why practitioners describe it as fragile. The starting point was the Kraken settlement of 9 February 2023: $30m in disgorgement, prejudgment interest and penalties, immediate closure of the US staking-as-a-service programme, and a permanent injunction, with no admission or denial. The theory was that a service marketed with advertised returns of as much as 21% was an unregistered investment contract.

The reversal came in stages. On 29 May 2025 the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance stated that solo, self-custodial, delegated and custodial protocol staking are not securities transactions, along with ancillary services including slashing coverage, early unbonding, alternate reward schedules and asset aggregation — on the reasoning that they fail Howey's "efforts of others" prong and that the provider's functions are administrative or ministerial. Liquid staking and restaking were explicitly excluded, and Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw dissented. A separate staff statement on 5 August 2025 addressed liquid staking on conditions: the deposited asset must be a covered crypto asset, the provider's role administrative or ministerial, rewards protocol-driven, and the receipt token a genuine one-to-one receipt. Provider-guaranteed or actively managed returns, restaking, and assets that are already securities remain outside it.

On 17 March 2026 a joint SEC–CFTC interpretation was published at 91 FR 13714. It is Commission-level rather than staff-level, which makes it materially stronger, and it establishes a taxonomy of digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins and digital securities. It is reported to place Ether among digital commodities outside the securities laws, covering self-staking, self-custodial staking, custodial staking and qualifying liquid staking receipt tokens. Restaking is excluded again. The CFTC chairman stated that the agency would administer the Commodity Exchange Act consistently with the SEC's interpretation.

What is settled, and what is not

The table below pairs the questions a reader actually has with the specific instrument that currently answers them. Where the answer is "nothing", that is the finding.

The European Union: a prohibition, two workarounds and a live review

MiCA prohibits granting interest, or any other benefit related to the length of time a holder holds the token, on asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens. The prohibition is drafted broadly enough to cover rewards, cashback and bonuses regardless of the name used, and it extends to crypto-asset service providers rather than binding only issuers. Its practical effect is easy to observe: compliant platforms withdrew stablecoin rewards for EU customers, and EU retail cannot receive native yield on a MiCA-authorised e-money token.

Two consequences follow that are worth stating plainly, because they are features of the rule rather than evasions of it. First, spending-linked cashback is not remuneration linked to holding period, so it sits outside the prohibition — MEXC launched a USDT Visa card on 31 August 2026 with up to 10% transaction cashback alongside a separate 7% annual yield product, and stablecoin card volumes reached $759m in July 2026, roughly two and a half times a year earlier. Second, Tether has not applied for e-money token authorisation, so USDT-based offerings are not caught directly by a rule aimed at authorised tokens. The result is a regulatory asymmetry that points EU users toward the less regulated asset. Neither MiCA nor GENIUS directly regulates non-custodial DeFi, which leaves self-custodied deposits into lending protocols outside both frameworks.

The review is live. The European Commission opened a targeted MiCA review consultation on 20 May 2026 with 86 questions, covering multi-issuance stablecoins, run risk, EU reserve depletion, preferential redemption rights, liquidity buffers, whether e-money token issuers should have central bank accounts, bank-style resolution regimes, and extending MiCA to DeFi, staking, crypto lending and NFTs. Question 20 asks directly whether the interest prohibition should be kept or loosened under defined conditions. The consultation closes on 30 September 2026, after which the Commission reports under MiCA Articles 140 to 142. Nothing has been decided, and a legislative proposal would be a separate and much longer process. The compliant alternative that has grown in the meantime — tokenised money market funds — is covered intokenised treasuries.

The United Kingdom: one problem removed, one regime pending

The UK dealt with a specific legal risk early. A statutory instrument made on 9 January 2025 and in force from 31 January amends FSMA 2000 to exclude arrangements for qualifying cryptoasset staking from the definition of a collective investment scheme. Before it, a pooled staking service faced a genuine argument that it was operating an unauthorised collective investment scheme. The instrument removes that argument. It does not impose new obligations on staking providers, and the explanatory memorandum estimated that at least 30 firms would benefit.

The wider regime arrived on 30 June 2026 with FCA Policy Statement PS26/11, which sets final rules on an activity basis covering stablecoin issuance, qualifying cryptoasset trading platforms, intermediaries and arrangers, and market abuse. Two staking-specific points came out of it. The FCA amended its conduct rules to avoid unintended restrictions on auto-staking, so that a customer's consent may cover current and future holdings subject to conditions and an annual notification. And it clarified how record-keeping requirements apply to liquid staking models. What PS26/11 does not give is a date: the regime is phased, the FCA has signalled a consultation on a deferral mechanism for execution-venue requirements with a possible three-month extension to January 2028, and commentary generally refers to the rules applying from 2027. We could not confirm from primary FCA material whether staking is itself designated a regulated activity under the new regime, and we do not state that it is.