The Otus Briefing.

We were at our college 10-year reunion last week, which was a strange and warm place to spend a few days. Strange because it compresses ten years of life decisions into ten-minute conversations. Warm because people we haven't spoken to in a decade picked up like no time had passed. Reunions have a way of making you think about what actually compounds — in careers, in relationships, in money. That last one is what this week's piece is about.

A few quick updates:

• Otus is live on Android. If you've been waiting, reply for an early access code.
• Direct on-ramps from retail banks are live. Fund your account straight from your existing bank, no intermediary steps.
• Ravi is in SF this week. If you'll be around, reply and let's get coffee.

Be boring, get rich

The financial culture young people grew up inside has been, for the last several years, loud. Prediction markets are loud. Sports betting apps are loud. Memecoins are loud. Trading apps designed to feel like games are loud. Every financial product that's gone viral in the last decade has shared one feature: it makes you feel like something is happening.

Compounding doesn't feel like something is happening. That's why it doesn't go viral. But it's also why it works.

Here is the actual scoreboard. The median return on prediction markets is negative. The median return on memecoin trading is, as we all know too well, catastrophic. The median return on a boring savings account paying real interest, held without touching, over ten years, is positive. The loud products redistribute wealth from the people who use them to the people who run them. The quiet ones do the opposite.

It's an asymmetry of attention. We talk about the loud thing constantly. We talk about the quiet thing rarely. A whole generation has come of age inside that imbalance, which has shaped what feels normal, what feels boring, and what feels smart.

The actual smart move is the boring one. Pick the thing that pays you to wait. Then, wait.

That's what Otus is for. It's the boring choice with the math in your favor — a better savings (and soon investing) account that earns what the underlying markets are actually paying, without you having to think about it. Just compounding, in the background, on autopilot.

Yield snapshot

Rates this week span a wide range — from 3% in the most established markets to 9%+ in more active strategies. The spread reflects real differences in complexity and risk, not noise.

• Established (3–4%) — large, battle-tested lending pools. Rates move with broader borrowing demand.
• Active (5–7%) — vaults routing capital across multiple lending markets or strategies. Higher rates, more moving parts.
• Higher complexity (7–9%+) — strategies with less track record or more concentrated exposure. Rates are real, but so is the additional complexity.

— Meet & Ravi

Quick note up front: we're back in the U.S. for a few weeks. Say hi if you're in Chicago, Boston, New York, or SF — we're around.

Also a strange week for crypto markets: BTC hit a 30-day low of $68.6K this week while stablecoin yields stayed steady (Otus users are enjoying 7% interest right now). That kind of divergence is exactly the test that separates real yield from yield-shaped trading — which is what this week's briefing gets into.

The case against chasing 12%+ yield

If you're new to onchain finance, 12% on a savings account probably reads like a fantasy or a scam. If you've been around longer, you've seen rates much higher than that, and you've watched some of them work out and some of them not.

Our yield sits in the 5–7% range. The reason is that the vaults we route to are overcollateralized lending markets — borrowers post more collateral than they borrow, pay interest, depositors earn it. Same structure as a traditional money market, fewer intermediaries.

Once you push past 7%, the underlying mechanics change. You're no longer in pure lending. You're in looping, undercollateralized lending, leveraged strategies, or in some cases just directional trading dressed up as yield. Those aren't bad strategies per se — sophisticated investors use them deliberately — but they aren't savings.

When BTC dropped 15% this week, the lending rates barely moved, because the demand to borrow stablecoins doesn't disappear when prices fall. But many of the higher-rate "yield vaults" out there did move, because what's actually underneath them is directional exposure to the same assets that just dropped.

Our problem isn't that these products exist. It's that they're being grouped in the same category as a stablecoin lending vault. Calling a 30% leveraged strategy a "yield vault" puts a real money market product and a structured trading product on the same shelf, and asks a non-expert to tell them apart based on the rate alone.

The reason we cap our yield at the rate the underlying markets actually support, and not the rate we could market, is that we'd rather have a product that holds up when conditions change than one that looks best on a comparison page. If a competitor offers 12% next month, we won't match it, so don't ask.

Yield snapshot

Rates this week span a wide range — from 3% in the most established markets to 9%+ in more active strategies. The spread reflects real differences in complexity and risk, not noise.

• Established (3–4%) — large, battle-tested lending pools. Rates move with broader borrowing demand.
• Active (5–7%) — vaults routing capital across multiple lending markets or strategies. Higher rates, more moving parts.
• Higher complexity (7–9%+) — strategies with less track record or more concentrated exposure. Rates are real, but so is the additional complexity.

What we're reading

Starting Startups by Doug Park. Congrats to Doug, a friend of Otus, on the launch of his new book which just hit #1 New Release on Amazon. It's been a useful read for thinking about how we're building Otus.

— Meet & Ravi

A quick thank you first. Issue 001 was read by over 300 people last week and a surprising number replied. Some of you asked good questions, some flagged things we glossed over, and one of you trolled us. Keep it coming. We love hearing from you.

The true cost of "savings"

We saw this stat last week: the U.S. dollar has lost about 22% of its purchasing power over the last six years. With how much inflation has been in the news, it's not exactly shocking; but seeing the actual number makes it hit a little different.

Now think about where your money's been sitting that whole time. If a meaningful chunk of your rainy day fund, or your "someday" car or house money, has been in a regular savings account, you've been earning close to nothing on it. Which means it's quietly worth about 22% less than when you put it there. You did the responsible thing. The system just didn't return the favor.

Honestly, traditional bank savings might be a bit of a bygone product at this point. Not bad per se — just not really doing the job anymore. If you want your money to actually keep up, you have to be a little more active about where you park it.

Yield snapshot

Rates this week span a wide range — from 3% in the most established markets to 9%+ in more active strategies. The spread reflects real differences in complexity and risk, not noise.

• Established (3–4%) — large, battle-tested lending pools. Rates move with broader borrowing demand.
• Active (5–7%) — vaults routing capital across multiple lending markets or strategies. Higher rates, more moving parts.
• Higher complexity (7–9%+) — strategies with less track record or more concentrated exposure. Rates are real, but so is the additional complexity.

What we're reading

9 charts on what stablecoins are becoming — a16z crypto. Shoutout Steve for sharing this.

— Meet & Ravi

Welcome to the first Otus briefing.

A lot of people carry a quiet worry about money: am I saving enough, am I in the right things, will any of this add up to a home or a comfortable retirement. Most of that anxiety doesn't come from making bad decisions. It comes from not having anywhere clear to look.

This briefing is one place to look. Every week, we'll share where dollars are earning, what's changed, and what we think is worth paying attention to. Plain language, no hype, and the occasional strong opinion.

Stablecoin yield has been hiding in plain sight

Your dollar can earn while it sits. A stablecoin is a dollar on a blockchain. Same value. Same stability. But unlike the dollar in your bank account, it can be put to work automatically — 24/7, with no minimum balance and no branch manager to call.

The yield comes from one simple thing: borrowing demand. Traders and businesses borrow stablecoins onchain to do things — trade, hedge, bridge between markets. They pay interest. That interest flows back to the people who supplied the funds. You can be one of those people.

Traditional banks collect that spread and keep most of it. Onchain lending markets pass most of it through to depositors. That structural difference is the whole story.

Yield snapshot

Rates this week span a wide range — from 3% in the most established markets to 9%+ in more active strategies. The spread reflects real differences in complexity and risk, not noise.

• Established (3–4%) — large, battle-tested lending pools. Rates move with broader borrowing demand.
• Active (5–7%) — vaults routing capital across multiple lending markets or strategies. Higher rates, more moving parts.
• Higher complexity (7–9%+) — strategies with less track record or more concentrated exposure. Rates are real, but so is the additional complexity.

Otus lens

The tiering in this snapshot reflects exactly how we think about vaults internally: credibility first, then yield. Our job is to make sure that when a higher rate appears on our platform, the complexity behind it is accounted for, not hidden. We're currently focused on the established and active tiers, and watching the higher-complexity space closely as track records develop.

— Meet & Ravi