Geoff Kendrick, who is the head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered, released a report stating that by 2028 there could be a migration of approximately 500 billion dollars leaving banks and ending up in stablecoins.
This number is more down-to-earth than what he mentioned last October, when he thought it could reach 1 trillion.
The study came at a time when people in Washington are discussing the so-called CLARITY Act, which would be a general rule for digital assets. This law could even limit whether stablecoins can provide returns to investors. If they do, then banks could lose a significant chunk of money.
Even with the process somewhat stalled, Kendrick believes that the project will still end up on President Donald Trump's desk by the end of the first quarter.
He explained that if deposits in banks decrease, the so-called NIM (net interest margin) will also shrink. This margin is nothing more than the difference between what the bank earns from lending money (mortgages, credit cards, etc.) and what it pays to depositors.
According to him, regional banks in the United States are the most vulnerable in this story, because they rely on NIM for over 60% of their revenue. The big players, like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, derive less than 20% from it.
Mas Kendrick also warned that this does not mean the end of regional banks. If stablecoin issuers keep a good portion of their reserves in the banks themselves, the net outflow of deposits may be much lower. In other words, the money leaves one side and comes back from the other, without causing too much damage.