StableCOin giants like Tether and Circle take advantage of the current high-interest rate environment, while stablecoin holders don’t see any of the return, Wormhole’s co-founder Dan Refereker said at Mercado Bitcoin’s DAC 2025 event.
When he spoke as a panelist, he said companies effectively “print money” by keeping the dividends from the US treasuries supporting their tokens. For example, Tether reported $ 4.9 billion in net profit in the second quarter of the year. It has seen the company’s valuation rise to a reported $ 500 billion in a new financing round.
As interest rates remain elevated, Reecer suggested that it is only a matter of time before users expect a proportion of this dividend or move their funds elsewhere.
Platforms such as M^0 and Agora are already responding to this requirement, he suggested. These projects allow stableCOin infrastructure to be built in a way that routes give to applications or directly to end users, rather than the issuer catching it all.
“If I keep USDC, I lose money and lose money that Circle earns,” Reecer said in the session, referring to the possibility of having a non-affected token supported by US Treasury generating income.
Tether and circle probably do not share the yield generated from their stableecoins directly with users as it could draw honor for regulators. An alternative that steadily grows is money market funds that allow investors to get exposure to the yield behind these stablecoins.
Circle, it’s worth noting, acquired hashnote earlier this year for $ 1.3 billion, the issuer of the tokenized Money Market Fund Usyc. With this acquisition, Circle aims to enable convertibility between cash and dividend -bearing security on blockchains.
However, these money market funds are still a fraction of the stablecoin market. According to RWA.xyz -Data, their market value currently stands around $ 7.3 billion, while the global stableecoin market has peaked $ 290 billion.
A spokesperson for Tether speaker told Coindesk that “USDT’s role is clear: It’s a digital dollar, not an investment product.” He added that “hundreds of millions of people” are dependent on USDT, especially in new markets, “where it acts as a lifeline against inflation, banking instability and capital control.”
“While a few percentage points may make the difference for rich Americans or Europeans, the real savings for our USDT user base are the against dramatic inflation that is so common in developing countries-the number of 50% to 90% year-over years with falls of local currency values against the US dollar to 70% the year before,” he said.
“To pass on the yield would fundamentally change the nature, risk profile and regulatory treatment,” the spokesman added. “Competitors experimenting with yield -bearing stableecoins are targeted at a completely different audience and they take on further risks.”
Fireblocks’ Stephen Richardson said under the panel that the wider stableecoin market meanwhile is evolving against real-world cases, including cross-border payments and FX services.
He pointed out that tokenized money moving immediately could help solve problems that exist today, such as slow business payout rails or expensive transfers. Financial innovation, added Richardson, is already seen in the sector, where an example is tokenized money market funds used as security on stock exchanges.
