In 1981, Gov. Bill Janklow made a bet most governors would have run from. Citibank’s credit card business was suffocating under New York’s interest rate caps, and the bank was looking for a state willing to write modern rules for a new kind of finance. Janklow and the Legislature repealed South Dakota’s usury cap and invited the bank to Sioux Falls.
Plenty of people thought the state was chasing something risky and unfamiliar. What South Dakota actually got was the modern credit card industry, thousands of jobs and a financial sector that still anchors its largest city.
Forty-five years later, Congress is deciding where the next financial industry gets built, and South Dakota’s senior senator holds one of the deciding votes. The CLARITY Act, the bill that would finally write clear federal rules for digital assets, gets its first procedural vote on Sept. 15.
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