The stuff banks invest in isn't really "low risk", they invest in things like long-term loans that have a non-negligible risk of default. In order to be properly safe, a stablecoin would need to invest in much lower risk investments like money market funds and high quality commercial paper, which tends to have very low returns. The stablecoin would also need to have proper custodial arrangements in place which would cost money. Companies like PayPal do something similar as a way to avoid holding many millions in a bank account (which, as well as being subject to the credit risk of the bank, could attract significant fees and possibly negative interest). They almost certainly don't make significant profit from the practice.
What you are describing does happen, but it's not banks that do it, it's money market funds.
> invest in much lower risk investments like money market funds and high quality commercial paper, which tends to have very low returns
As I wrote in the other comment: Coinbase says the tens of billions of USD backing their USDC are in short term US treasuries. ATM the return on these is 4.7% yearly? 4.7% yearly they pocket on more than $50 billions. Without giving the returns back to the USDC holders (as far as I know people keeping USDCs in their own private wallets do not get any yeld).
Or is Coinbase not actually putting these tens of billions in short term US treasuries (which mean they'd be lying)?
Or am I misunderstanding what's the yearly return on these short term US treasuries?
> 4.7% yearly they pocket on more than $50 billions. Without giving the returns back to the USDC holders (as far as I know people keeping USDCs in their own private wallets do not get any yeld).
The return on US treasuries is usually lower than inflation. You lose real money by keeping only US treasuries. It could maybe be done with TIPS, but that would be a little tricky to accomplish.
For example a couple years ago, 1 year treasuries had a ~0% rate.
Just to expand on the comments made by other places: The holders of Tether lose money (effectively) due to inflation. The owners of Tether the corporation (Binance) can collect the interest, which is cash money. Billions is billions.
They only have to repay the face value of the deposited cash. Yes, the real purchasing power goes down over time, but that's not their problem!
Yes, but it doesn’t matter if the money you are losing to inflation is being lent to you for free. Although coinbase does pay a small percentage to usdc holders on their exchange I think it is one of the ways to convince people to switch away from tether.
What you are describing does happen, but it's not banks that do it, it's money market funds.