Beyond DeFi: Where Stablecoins Can Earn Much More

The crypto industry still offers unique ways to earn yield.

Most people look for somewhere to park their stablecoins in DeFi at 6-10% APY. But there are far less obvious opportunities that can deliver significantly higher returns - fully passively.

I’m talking about prediction markets, where you can sometimes find truly unbelievable bets.

For example, there’s a market on Polymarket betting that the US government will not confirm the existence of aliens. If that doesn’t happen by the end of this year, the implied return is about 16%. On top of that, if you enter now and hold the position to resolution, the platform adds roughly another 4% annualized as a long-term incentive. Combined, that comes out to around 19% over nine months.

Where in traditional finance would you find something like this? I’m pretty sure that bookmakers would offer much lower odds on such an unlikely outcome.

You know I’m not a fan of the "not financial advice" disclaimer - I think it often undermines everything that comes before it. But in this case, I think it’s fair to say: I personally wouldn’t put money into bets like this. My intuition tells me there has to be a catch somewhere. Even though I can’t point to one (the resolution criteria look clear and transparent), I still can’t quite believe it’s that simple - so I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

I just want to highlight the kind of opportunities that occasionally open up when you hold crypto instead of just keeping money in a bank.

The only thing I can genuinely recommend is this: if you do decide to try it and need USDC on Polygon, you can swap any cryptocurrency for it on Rabbit.io at the best available rate. That part, at least, comes with no hidden surprises.