BloFin Research: The Surging U.S. Treasury Yield: Can Stablecoins Help?

📄Full Article· Automatically extracted by trafilatura9030 words

Stablecoin growth creates a durable, expanding bid for short-duration Treasuries, reinforcing the U.S. Treasury’s deliberate shift toward T-bill financing. Redemption requirements confine stablecoins to the short end, the long-end demand gap remains dependent on the return of foreign institutional buyers. - Stablecoins create a bid for short-duration Treasuries but cannot absorb 10Y or 30Y duration risk, reserve liquidity requirements preclude holding assets with meaningful interest-rate sensitivity. - The Treasury’s shift toward T-bill financing reduces long-end supply pressure but compounds front-end rollover risk, stablecoin demand directly absorbs that risk, making the two mechanisms mutually reinforcing at the short end of the curve. - The long-end problem remains unsolved by either mechanism. Compressing 10Y and 30Y yields requires bringing foreign duration buyers back. The long-end problem The 30-year U.S. Treasury yield had pushed to 5.12% and the 10-year to 4.60%, both reaching multi-year highs. Concurrent sell-offs hit UK gilts, Japanese government bonds, and German Bunds. The pressure is not confined to bond markets: with the 30-year above 5%, a near risk-free 5% return makes the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets explicit, gold fell to a one-month low near $4,500 and bitcoin dropped below $80,000 on the same session the 10-year broke 4.55%. The Fed controls the short end directly through the policy rate; the long end is set by the market, by investors’ collective judgment on inflation, growth, and fiscal sustainability, and the Fed has no direct instrument to suppress it without reviving large-scale asset purchases. The question it raises: does the U.S. have the instruments to bring the long end down? Foreign holders, representing approximately 30% of outstanding U.S. Treasury ownership, are reducing exposure. China, now the third-largest foreign holder at $693 billion, down from a peak of $1.3 trillion in 2013, has been reallocating reserves toward gold. Source: macromicro Japan, the largest U.S. Treasuries foreign holder at $1.14 trillion, faces a compounding repatriation incentive: Bank of Japan rate normalization is raising domestic JGB yields toward multi-decade highs. As domestic alternatives improve on both a hedged and unhedged basis, several of Japan’s largest life insurers explicitly cut foreign bond exposure in 2025. The repricing also reflects three reinforcing inputs beyond the immediate demand shortfall. Energy-driven inflation is keeping the Fed’s reaction function constrained and supporting a “higher for longer” rate pricing regime. Persistent fiscal deficits require heavy bond issuance at whatever yield the market will accept. Deglobalization is structurally re-embedding an inflation premium into long yields: the disinflationary tailwind from three decades of global supply-chain integration has partly reversed, pushing term premiums that were compressed near zero throughout 2010–2021 back to material levels. Stablecoins provide a front-end solution Stablecoins have entered the policy conversation as a support mechanism for Treasury demand. The logic is directionally correct but confined to one segment of the curve. Total dollar-stablecoin supply has reached $323 billion as of May 2026, with USDT at $190 billion and USDC at $78 billion together controlling roughly 83% of the market. Tether’s Q1 2026 attestation shows approximately $117 billion in U.S. Treasury bills, its single largest reserve allocation, while USDC maintains a comparable T-bill-heavy structure. The GENIUS Act, now enacted and with implementation rules due July 2026, hard-codes this preference by restricting payment stablecoin reserves to cash, repo, or Treasuries with maturities of 93 days or less. Source: MacroMicro Source: MacroMicro Stablecoin issuers are functionally equivalent to money market funds with global distribution: they export dollar demand to offshore holders and create a persistent bid for short-duration Treasuries. With the ever expanding stablecoin supply, that could generate hundreds of billions in incremental front-end demand, reducing rollover pressure on bills and freeing the Treasury to extend average maturity at lower short-end rates. That relief has limits. Stablecoin reserve demand is concentrated in bills and overnight collateral, while the long end is driven by expected policy rates, inflation expectations, fiscal credibility, foreign reserve allocation, hedging costs, and the term premium. Stablecoins can ease front-end funding pressure, but compressing long-end yields requires instruments that directly affect duration demand and term-premium risk. The architecture to compress long-term yields Long-term Treasury yields are hard to bring down because they depend on more than Federal Reserve rate cuts. Short-term rates are heavily influenced by the Fed. Treasury bills can also get support from stablecoin companies. But the 10-year and 30-year Treasury markets are different. They require large investors willing to lend money to the U.S. government for a long time. To push those long-term yields lower, several things need to happen. Bringing down energy price Oil and gasoline affect inflation quickly. When oil prices fall, inflation often looks less threatening. That can make investors more comfortable owning long-term bonds. This matters for Treasury yields because investors demand higher yields when they are worried inflation will stay high. The current energy price elevation is primarily a Middle East conflict issue. Lower energy prices require de-escalation, and de-escalation is a political outcome, not an economic one. If the conflict cannot be solved in the short term, the burden shifts entirely to the remaining mechanisms discussed below. Shifting issuance to the front end reduces long-end supply pressure The most direct lever the Treasury controls is the composition of its own issuance. Since COVID, the U.S. has shifted financing heavily toward T-bills: in 2025, 84% of government debt issuance was made up of Treasury bills with maturities of 12 months or less, the highest ratio since the financial crisis. T-bills now represent 22% of all outstanding marketable Treasury debt, above the historical 15–20% target range the TBAC has historically recommended. By issuing fewer 10Y and 30Y bonds, the Treasury reduces the volume of long-duration supply that must be absorbed by price-sensitive buyers, mechanically relieving upward pressure on long-end yields. This tool is real and already deployed. But it carries a compounding risk: over-reliance on securities with maturities of less than 12 months increases the U.S. debt’s sensitivity to interest rate changes. Short-term bills must be constantly rolled over at prevailing rates, if rates stay elevated, refinancing costs accumulate rapidly rather than being locked in at long-term fixed rates. The strategy manages the long-end supply problem while creating a larger refinancing risk at the front end. Stablecoin demand, discussed above, helps absorb that front-end rollover pressure, making the two mechanisms complementary, but neither resolving the underlying cost of debt. Japan and foreign buyer reengagement are necessary The U.S. depends heavily on foreign investors to buy Treasury debt. These investors include pension funds, insurers, central banks, banks, and asset managers. Japan is especially important. It is the largest named foreign holder of U.S. Treasuries, with about $1.19 trillion in holdings as of March 2026. So when Japanese investors become less interested in U.S. bonds, it can matter for the whole Treasury market. The problem is that Japanese bonds have become more attractive. For years, Japanese bond yields were extremely low, so Japanese investors had a strong reason to look overseas for higher returns. That has changed. The Bank of Japan has moved away from its old ultra-low-rate policy, and Japanese government bond yields have risen sharply. That gives Japanese insurers, pension funds, and banks a stronger reason to keep more money at home. If they can earn a reasonable return from Japanese government bonds, they have less need to buy long-term U.S. Treasuries. Source: MacroMicro U.S.-Japan FX cooperation could allow the yen to strengthen in an orderly way as the Bank of Japan continues normalising policy. The important effect would not be the stronger yen by itself, but the likely fall in dollar-yen hedging costs as the U.S.-Japan short-rate gap narrows. If hedging costs fall enough (the hedge cost mostly comes from the short term rate difference), long-term U.S. Treasuries could again offer Japanese life insurers an attractive return after currency hedging. That would support renewed Japanese demand for the U.S. long end. Disclaimer: The information provided herein does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, trading advice, or any other sort of advice, and should not be treated as such. All content set out below is for informational purposes only.

Data Status✓ Full text extractedRead Original (BeInCrypto)

🔍Historical Similar Events· Keyword + Asset Matching6 items

2026-05-15

CLARITY will strengthen dollar stablecoins, but Asia wins on yield: HashKey Research

2026-04-19

Stablecoins can help businesses turn costs into revenue, Paxos Labs cofounder says

Similarity 150%關鍵字 help/stablecoins/can

2026-05-15

Augustus CEO says banks can’t rebuild for AI and stablecoins

Similarity 130%關鍵字 stablecoins/can

2026-05-15

Bitcoin Shrugs off CLARITY gains as Institutions Sell Amid Surging Treasury Yields