According to BlockBeats on June 20, Tether co-founder Reeve Collins discussed the structure behind stablecoins and the way yield is handled when users deposit dollar funds. Collins said Tether holds the dollars deposited by users and invests those funds in U.S. Treasury bonds, whose current yield is about 3%–4%. Under the existing arrangement described by Collins, Tether keeps all of that yield for itself.
Dollar Liquidity and the Question of Yield Ownership
Collins framed the issue around the exchange between users and the stablecoin issuer. Users receive fast and instant dollar liquidity on a global scale through Tether, but they do not receive the yield generated by the assets backing their holdings. In his description, the mechanism is simple: users provide dollar funds, Tether manages those funds, invests them in Treasuries, and retains the income generated from that allocation.
He said this straightforward model helped Tether become a market leader. At the same time, Collins described a structural feature embedded in the model: yield is concentrated at the platform level rather than being distributed to the users whose funds generate it. In his view, this is the part of the system that the stablecoin 2.0 era needs to change. The core point of his remarks was not only that stablecoins provide efficient dollar movement, but also that the allocation of returns from user dollar funds should be re-examined.
Investment, AI Infrastructure, and Bitcoin Allocation
Beyond the stablecoin yield-distribution model, Collins also commented on the distinction between “investment” and “speculation.” He said the two should be clearly separated. In the same discussion, he said capital should enter the AI infrastructure layer as early as possible, rather than trying to stand outside that layer and build at the application layer. His remarks placed emphasis on the layer at which capital and builders choose to participate.
Collins also said Bitcoin should be held over the long term as a core allocation. Taken together, his comments connected three themes: a redesign of how stablecoin-related dollar yield is distributed, a preference for entering AI at the infrastructure layer rather than the application layer from the outside, and long-term Bitcoin holdings as a central component of allocation. The remarks present his view of stablecoin 2.0 as a shift away from a model in which platform-level entities retain all of the yield generated by user funds.