The same Fed rate hike can help stablecoins and hurt Bitcoin borrowers

When you hold a dollar stablecoin, somebody else may be earning interest on the assets backing your balance, while a company borrowing to buy Bitcoin has to find the money to pay its lenders.Both businesses are crypto-native, but a higher interest rate can reward the first and eat into the economics of the second.That split gets lost when every move in Treasury yields becomes a verdict on whether money is getting easier or harder for the whole industry.Different rates reach different businesses through their contracts, so a bond-market move that discourages investors from buying speculative assets can also improve the income earned on some crypto reserves.We can see this in Circle's second-quarter filing: reserve income supplied 95.2% of revenue in the three months ended June 30, 2026. Its reserve returns track close to the prevailing secured overnight financing rate (SOFR), leaving revenue heavily dependent on how many stablecoins are outstanding and what their backing earns.The rate in that calculation is important because overnight returns and the 10-year Treasury yield can move differently. Treating both as the same price of money can leave you expecting a windfall at an issuer...