Tether Co-Founder: The Era of Stablecoins 2.0 Is Coming, Using "This Move" to Capture the USDT Market

Tether Co-Founder Reeve Collins Launches New Stablecoin Infrastructure STBL. The system splits payments and yields through a dual-token architecture, returning reserve asset interest to users, officially ushering in a new era of dual-token stablecoin structure.

Reeve Collins, co-founder of the world's largest stablecoin USDT, believes that the stablecoin industry is about to enter the "2.0 era." He points out that Tether successfully created a dollar token that circulates on the blockchain, allowing users to enjoy global, real-time, low-cost dollar transfers. However, this stablecoin 1.0 model also has structural issues: users give dollars to the issuer, who invests in assets like U.S. Treasuries to earn returns but does not distribute these earnings to users.

Collins co-founded Tether in 2013, with a very simple concept at the time: users deposit 1 dollar, and Tether issues 1 on-chain token representing the dollar’s value. This design made USDT the most important trading medium in the crypto market and helped Tether grow into a giant stablecoin issuer managing about $180 billion in reserves, even ranking among the top U.S. Treasury holders worldwide.

However, Collins, who no longer participates in Tether’s daily operations, is now building what he calls the next-generation stablecoin infrastructure, STBL. In an interview on the podcast "On the Margin," he stated that the next phase of stablecoins will focus on: higher-yield reserve assets, genuinely returning profits to users, and enabling banks, brands, sports teams, platforms, and various institutions to issue their own stablecoins on a foundational protocol.

Problems with Stablecoin 1.0: Issuers Take All the Interest

Collins describes the elegance of Tether’s business model as being extremely simple: users give me $1, and I give you 1 token. This model made Tether the default trading pair in the market and gave it a significant first-mover advantage in centralized exchanges, cross-border transfers, and crypto trading.

But the problem lies here. Tether allocates user-deposited dollars into assets like U.S. Treasuries, which currently yield about 3% to 4%. However, these earnings are mainly retained by the issuer. Users, while gaining liquidity and payment functions from stablecoins, cannot participate in the interest generated by the underlying reserve assets.

Collins believes this is the most critical fix needed for stablecoin 1.0. Stablecoins should not just be tools for issuers to earn spreads; they should become a financial infrastructure where users, issuers, and the ecosystem share in the profits.

STBL: Splitting Stablecoins into "Payment Tokens" and "Yield Tokens"

To address this, Collins’ STBL adopts a dual-token architecture, dividing the stablecoin function into two parts: one is a stablecoin used for payments, transfers, and trading; the other is a yield token corresponding to the underlying asset’s returns.

This design aims to allow users to continue using stablecoins for payments and trading while also accumulating the yields generated by the underlying reserves. Collins notes that current crypto frameworks often require users to lock or stake funds to earn yields, but once funds are locked, users cannot freely use those stablecoins. STBL seeks to resolve the contradiction between "circulability" and "interest-bearing" features.

Additionally, STBL does not plan to rely solely on U.S. Treasuries as reserve assets. Collins states that STBL has partnered with Hamilton Lane’s SCOPE fund, which targets a return of about 7% to 8%. When combined with a mix of assets like U.S. Treasuries, the overall net yield could be around 5%. The goal is to create a stablecoin infrastructure supported by institutional-grade assets that can distribute real yields to users and issuers.

Is STBL Stablecoin 2.0 or a Repackaging of Pendle’s PT/YT?

However, from the perspective of existing DeFi products, the idea of "splitting stablecoins into payment and yield tokens" is not entirely new. The most direct comparison is Pendle Finance’s well-established PT / YT yield splitting model.

Pendle’s core mechanism involves splitting a yield-generating asset into two parts: PT, the Principal Token, representing the principal; and YT, the Yield Token, representing the accrued yield.

PT signifies the principal portion of the underlying yield asset, which can be exchanged 1:1 for the underlying asset at maturity; YT represents all the yield generated before maturity, and users can buy and sell either principal or yield separately. In other words, Pendle has long separated "principal" and "yield" rights, allowing the market to price and trade them independently.

For stablecoins, users can deposit yield-bearing stable assets like sUSDe, sDAI, aUSDC, USDe, USDS into Pendle, splitting into PT-stablecoin and YT-stablecoin. PT allows investors to obtain a fixed or discounted principal at maturity; YT lets investors bet on future interest rates, rewards, points, or yield changes. This is very similar to STBL’s claim of "one token for circulation and payments, another for yield."

Therefore, just looking at "yield splitting," STBL does seem to be reinventing the wheel. Pendle has already demonstrated that DeFi can split a yield asset into principal and yield via PT / YT, enabling secondary market trading. STBL’s division of stablecoins into spending tokens and yield tokens essentially addresses the same core issue: how to make stable assets both liquid and yield-bearing.

But STBL is not exactly the same as Pendle. The key difference lies in product positioning and issuance level.

Pendle is more like a yield trading market. It deals with existing yield assets, packaging and splitting them, then allowing users to trade fixed yields, floating yields, and future interest rate expectations. Its focus is on interest rate markets, yield pricing, and DeFi trading strategies.

In other words, Pendle takes "already existing yield assets" and splits them; STBL aims to embed yield splitting directly into the issuance of "stablecoins" from the start.

This is the core distinction. Pendle’s PT usually has a clear maturity date, leaning toward fixed-income products or interest rate derivatives; if STBL’s payment token is to become a stablecoin, it must have higher immediate liquidity, redeemability, payment scenarios, and compliance. YT in Pendle is a tool for trading future yields; STBL’s yield token is more like redistributing the underlying asset’s original yield to holders, brands, or ecosystem participants.

Thus, STBL isn’t inventing a completely new concept technically but is transplanting Pendle’s proven "yield rights splitting" idea into stablecoin issuance and RWA infrastructure narratives. From the perspective of seasoned DeFi players, this isn’t a new financial term; but from the perspective of banks, brands, exchanges, and institutions issuing stablecoins, STBL aims to productize, standardize, and white-label this mechanism so that traditional institutions unfamiliar with DeFi can also issue stable assets with built-in yield sharing.

• This article is reprinted with permission from: "Chain News"
• Original title: "Tether Co-Founder: Stablecoins Enter 2.0 Era, It’s Time to Return the Interest to Users"
• Original author: Neo