Key Takeaways
- The U.S. GENIUS Act prohibits interest-bearing stablecoins.
- Tokenized money market funds present an alternative way to generate on-chain Treasury yield.
- New DeFi products combine elements of both.
With the passage of the GENIUS Act in July, yield-bearing stablecoins were expelled from the sphere of regulated crypto products, landing in a legal gray area for U.S. users.
But investors have other ways to generate on-chain yields rooted in real-world assets. For example, recent product launches build decentralized finance (DeFi) utility on top of tokenized money market funds (MMFs).
Generating Interest On-Chain
Fiat-collateralized stablecoins and tokenized MMFs have much in common.
Both draw their value from U.S. Treasuries or other government bonds. But by moving that value on-chain, assets can be tranferred in real-time, without the hassle of settling securities transactions.
The main difference is that while MMFs accrue interest over time, the most popular stablecoins simply maintain their peg to the dollar—no dividends or returns.
In the U.S., that standard is now entrenched in law thanks to the GENIUS Act, which prohibits interest-bearing stablecoins.
The restriction is seen as a concession to Wall Street. Even with the ban in place, banks are worried enough about a potential deposit flight that they are actively lobbying to close a loophole platforms use to pay interest on stablecoin balances.
Yield-Bearing Stablecoins
When USDT was launched in 2014, it was envisaged as a pure payment instrument.
Tether retains 100% of the profit it makes from USDT reserves, which it has used to build a global technology empire that could soon be valued at half a trillion dollars.
Meanwhile, Circle pays USDC holders a portion of its reserve income via a revenue-sharing deal with Coinbase. But the feature is only available for Coinbase Wallet balances.
With the big two stablecoin issuers offering little in the way of savings opportunities, various yield-bearing alternatives have been developed over the years.
Mountain’s USDM, Ondo’s USDY, Lift’s USDL, and others automatically distribute reserve income to stablecoin holders via an on-chain rebasing mechanism. However, the issuers of these tokens insist they aren’t available in the U.S. market.
Tokenized MMF Utility
With yield-bearing stablecoins outlawed in the U.S., tokenized MMFs present an attractive alternative. Sure, they don’t have stablecoins’ payment functionality, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have utility.
Consider Franklin Templeton’s OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX).
Years before BlackRock and Fidelity jumped on the bandwagon, FOBXX pioneered the tokenized MMF concept, which it continues to push forward today.
Shares in the fund are issued as Benji tokens, valued at $1 USD each. Investors can either receive cash dividends, or watch their token balance grow in the same manner as stablecoin rebasing.
In an interview with CCN, Franklin Templeton’s head of digital assets, Roger Bayston, observed that money funds are one step away from cash and bank deposits, making them an ideal collateral instrument.
“Crypto hedge funds, who use stablecoins as collateral for their complex derivative trades, they would rather use a yield-bearing asset like a money fund,” he argued.
Moreover, unlike traditional funds that accrue interest at daily intervals, tokenized assets can track yields in real-time. That means users can earn interest even when they only hold tokens for short time, an advantage for institutions dealing in massive sums at a high volume, Bayston pointed out.
DeFi Integration
One area where stablecoins have traditionally had the upper hand over tokenized MMFs is decentralized finance.
Benji tokens and other on-chain MMF shares are regulated securities, so they can’t be deposited into DeFi protocols as easily as stablecoins.
But there are a growing number of hybrid products that bring stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets together.
For example, on Thursday, Oct. 2, AlloyX launched RYT (Real Yield Token), a new DeFi product that uses tokenized MMFs as the underlying asset, double-wrapping Treasuries as a token inside a token.
This mechanism means RYT can be supplied as DeFi loan collateral, emulating the way institutions use Benji, but with fewer restrictions on participation. Investors generate a return on the underlying assets and loan interest, amplifying their yield compared to pure stablecoin lending.
RYT is just one example of a broader trend, as the available range of tokenized assets proliferates and more permissionless secondary markets emerge. For retail investors, these create new opportunities for lending, borrowing, and leverage, all anchored in real-world value.
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James Morales is CCN’s blockchain and crypto policy reporter. He has been working in the news media since 2020, writing about topics such as payments, banking and financial technology. These days, he likes to explore the latest blockchain innovations and the evolving landscape of global crypto regulation.
With an educational background in social anthropology and media studies, James uses his platform as a journalist to explore how new technologies work, why they matter and how they might shape our future.
