A major investment bank recently made a bold move—freezing accounts of at least two rapidly growing stablecoin startups. The reason sounds lofty: these companies have operations in high-risk countries like Venezuela. In plain terms, the bank thinks the risk is too high.

This actually reflects a deeper issue. When these banks enforce KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) rules, their attitude toward crypto startups is becoming increasingly strict. As long as the source of funds is unclear or the business involves sensitive regions, accounts can be frozen at any moment—compliance doesn’t seem to be the main concern; the key is how much risk there is.

From another perspective, what does this mean for the stablecoin industry? First, the survival space is shrinking. Even the most compliant projects can be cut off if their user base or fund flows involve high-risk countries. This fully demonstrates that fiat on-ramps are actually quite fragile.

Second, the "tug-of-war" between banks and crypto institutions is escalating. Traditional financial institutions are pragmatic about cooperating with crypto businesses: they only deal with large, transparent, and clearly scoped companies. Emerging projects and cross-border operations? They try to avoid them whenever possible.

Most importantly, geopolitical factors have now become a new variable in stablecoin compliance. In the past, project teams only needed to consider their own regulatory environment. Now? National risk directly affects whether you can have a bank account. This constraint is stronger than any technical standard.