Coinbase Matches Robinhood's 7% Yield With a Different Design
Coinbase began offering a High Yield tier on its USDC lending product paying about 7.02% APY, roughly double the 3.63% APY on its standard Core tier, days after Robinhood Earn launched a competing 7% campaign. Both products route deposits through Morpho, a decentralized lending protocol with $7.11 billion in total value locked, and both are curated by Steakhouse Financial. But the two rates are built differently, according to a breakdown from analyst account Pink Brains. Robinhoods headline number blends several pieces: borrower interest, reserve yield from its $USDG stablecoins T-bill backing, zero vault fees and a top-up campaign run through Merkl that pays the gap between organic yield and a fixed 7% target. Pink Brains says comparable Steakhouse-curated vaults have been printing “mid 3%” organic yield, meaning roughly half of Robinhoods advertised rate is subsidy rather than native return. Coinbases design works differently. Depositors funds are looped against Ethenas USDe stablecoin up to the edge of perpetual futures funding rates, then topped up with $MORPHO token rewards rather than a fixed-target subsidy, per Pink Brains. That means Coinbases organic yield floats with funding markets instead of sitting under a ceiling, but it also isnt propped up to a guaranteed number. Pink Brains says the