Best crypto yields today, ranked by risk

It depends on the asset and how much risk you accept. DeFi lending, liquidity pools, vaults, staking, fixed-rate terms and custodial CeFi earn all pay different rates that move constantly. BitcoinYield grades every live option for Bitcoin, ETH, SOL and stablecoins across DeFi and centralized earn from A (lowest risk) to D, and shows the best rate at each grade among offers with a month of steady history and real liquidity, so you can see what more risk pays before you take it.

Every 3 hours, BitcoinYield reads each rate from the platform that pays it into one table per asset, ranked by yield and risk together. A DeFi rate is read from the protocol's own contracts: what its deposit token actually earned over the last day, week and month. An exchange's earn rate comes from the exchange's own API. Each offer shows any part of its rate paid as temporary incentive rewards, the liquidity you could exit into and its risk grade, so you can see the real spread for any asset (BTC, ETH, SOL, USDC, USDT, DAI and more) at a glance. Each rate is stamped with when it was read and links to where you can check it.

No. A high headline rate is often propped up by temporary incentives or comes with thin liquidity, lockups, or de-peg risk. BitcoinYield shows the base-versus-reward split and a risk grade so you can weigh yield against risk instead of chasing the top number.

It depends on the product. Borrowers pay lending interest, traders pay liquidity-pool fees, and some products distribute investment income or token incentives. Holding a payment stablecoin alone does not establish a right to interest. Check the specific product, its source of income, withdrawal terms and eligibility.

Start from the 3-month US Treasury bill yield, which BitcoinYield shows from the US Treasury's own daily data: what a stablecoin yield pays for its extra risks is roughly the amount it exceeds that rate. The median yield of tokenized Treasury funds in our feed shows what holding Treasuries on-chain returns after fees. A similar APY does not mean two products hold the same assets or carry the same risks; tokenized products still have issuer, custody, liquidity and technology risks, and their fees and investor restrictions vary.

A token designed to track a reference value, often the US dollar. What backs it differs: cash and Treasury bills (USDC), crypto collateral (DAI), a mix of loans, other stablecoins and a hedged trading position (USDe), or loans to borrowers, and each can lose its $1 peg in its own way. A stablecoin is not a bank deposit.

APR is an annual rate before compounding. APY includes compounding. A rate measured from a protocol's contracts is an APY, because it is what a deposit actually grew by; a rate an exchange or protocol publishes keeps the convention it is published in, labeled, and we do not convert between them. Neither is a guaranteed return.

DeFi uses on-chain protocols, often requiring deposits into smart contracts that can fail or restrict withdrawals. CeFi means a company holds your funds. Both involve risks beyond the quoted rate.