YIELD-BEARING STABLECOIN LANDSCAPE

Summary from the TLDR Crypto newsletter

The GENIUS Act bifurcates stablecoins into non-yielding Payment Stablecoins and Yield-Bearing Stablecoins (YBS). The YBS label masks fundamentally different risk profiles across three categories: RWA-backed assets like Ondo importing T-bill yields with counterparty risk, onchain native protocols like Ethena's sUSDe generating delta-neutral returns with smart contract and funding rate risk, and actively managed strategies like Maple Finance introducing human underwriting risk. Hyperliquid's USDH exemplifies innovative value capture by keeping the stablecoin non-yielding while directing 95-100% of RWA reserve yields back to the protocol ecosystem, circumventing regulatory restrictions. Current market analysis relying on TVL and APY comparisons fails to capture these disparate qualitative risk vectors.