Today in crypto: High-yield bonds are increasingly being used by Bitcoin miners to fund their rush to build AI and data center. A US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) proposal to implement the GENIUS Act would bar yield on payment stablecoins and Vitalik Buterin explained how Ethereum plans to be quantum-resistant in four years
High-yield bonds increasingly deployed to fund miners AI and data center aims
The AI and data center boom partly driven by Bitcoin miners is increasingly being financed through high-yield bond issuance, underscoring how lenders are pricing both risk and opportunity in the sector.
According to TheEnergyMag’s latest newsletter, companies tied to AI data center development have raised about $33 billion in long-term senior notes over the past 12 months, excluding convertible debt — bonds that can later be converted into equity and typically carry different risk dynamics.
The interest rate spread is notable: While regulated utilities and traditional energy companies generally borrow at 4% to 5%, AI- and crypto-linked issuers pay closer to 7% to 9%.
OCC seeks to settle stablecoin yield debate, clearing way for CLARITY
The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has dropped a 376‑page proposal to implement the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act that looks to settle the ongoing stablecoin yield fight.
The proposal is open to public comment for 60 days from Wednesday’s publication date, and sets out detailed rules for permitted payment stablecoin issuers under the OCC’s jurisdiction.
Supervised entities would be barred from paying any form of interest or yield, whether in cash, tokens or other consideration, “solely in connection with the holding, use, or retention” of a payment stablecoin, consistent with section 4(a)(11) of the GENIUS Act.
Thania Charmani, partner at global law firm Winston & Strawn, commented on X that the OCC proposed to “resolve the debate on stablecoin yield through rulemaking,” potentially clearing the way for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (CLARITY) to “proceed without that provision.”
GENIUS, enacted in July 2025, created a federal framework for payment stablecoins and restricted issuance in the US to licensed permitted issuers such as bank subsidiaries, new federal stablecoin issuers, and certain large state‑regulated firms.
The OCC’s draft rule translates that statutory framework into operational constraints, including tight limits on how GENIUS‑regulated issuers can structure economics around their stablecoins.
The proposal goes a step further, adding a rebuttable presumption that an issuer is violating the ban on paying yield if it has an arrangement to pay yield to an affiliate or “related third party” and that entity then pays yield to holders of the issuer’s payment stablecoin.
Buterin explains four-year roadmap for faster, quantum-resistant Ethereum
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on Thursday added to a newly released roadmap on Thursday, outlining how Ethereum plans to dramatically speed up the production of new blocks and the confirmation of transactions.
Dubbed the “Strawmap” and released by the Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol team, Buterin suggested improvements to slot times, the time it takes for Ethereum to produce new blocks, and upgrades to how nodes communicate with each other.
He also said there are planned improvements for finality, the point where a transaction is guaranteed to be irreversible, to take the current finality time of around 16 minutes down to a goal of between 6 and 16 seconds by replacing the current complicated confirmation system with a simpler one that’s also resistant to quantum attacks.
Buterin said the roadmap was a “very invasive set of changes,” so the plan is to bundle the largest step in each change with a “switch of the cryptography, notably to post-quantum hash-based signatures.”
