Opinion of: Armando Aguilar, head of training and capital growth in Terahash
Bitcoin has been treated as a purely inert asset for years: a decentralized safe, economically passive despite its fixed publication calendar. However, more than $ 7 billion in Bitcoin (BTC) are already gaining native yield, onchain via major protocols – this premise is broken.
The market capitalization of ~ 23 billion Gold is mainly inactive. Bitcoin, on the other hand, now wins onchain, while the holders retain custody. As new layers unlock, Bitcoin crosses a structural threshold: from simple passive to a rare productive.
This change discreetly redefines the way in which capital prices risk, how institutions allocate reserves and how the portfolio theory explains security. Rarity can explain price stability. However, productivity explains why minors, treasury bills and funds are now parking in BTC rather than simply building around it.
A safe asset that wins the yield is no longer digital gold – it is productive capital.
Rarity counts, but the rules of productivity
Bitcoin’s economic DNA has not changed: the offer remains capped at 21 million, the emission calendar is transparent and no central authority can inflate or censor it. Rarerity, auditability and resistance to manipulation always distinguish Bitcoin, but in 2025, these differentiating and unique factors began to signify something more.
Since the emission rate is locked, even if the new layers of protocol allow BTC to generate onchain yields, Bitcoin is now gaining ground for what it will allow. A new set of tools gives holders the possibility of gaining real performance without giving up care, based on centralized platforms and modifying the basic protocol. It leaves the basic mechanisms of Bitcoin intact, but changes the way in which capital is committed with the assets.
We already see this effect in practice. Bitcoin is the only asset in crypto officially organized in sovereign reserves: El Salvador continues to allocate BTC in its national treasure, and an American executive decree of 2025 recognized Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset for critical infrastructure. Meanwhile, the funds negotiated on the stock market (ETF) now hold more than 1.26 million BTC – more than 6% of the total supply.
In relation: Us Bitcoin Reserve vs Gold and Oil Reserves: How do they compare?
Also on the mining side, public minors no longer rush to sell. Instead, an increasing share allocates BTC to excitation and synthetic performance strategies to improve long -term yields.
It becomes obvious that the original value proposition has evolved subtly in conception but deeply in fact. What made a bitcoin worthy of confidence once to make it also powerful – an once passive asset becomes an active producing yield. This lays the basics of what comes then: a native yield curve that forms around Bitcoin itself, not to mention the assets linked to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin wins without abandoning control
Until recently, the idea of winning a return to the crypto seemed out of reach. In the case of Bitcoin, it was difficult to find a non -guardian yield, at least without compromising its neutrality of the base layer. But this hypothesis no longer holds. Today, the new layers of protocol allow holders to put the BTC to operate in the past once limited to centralized platforms.
Some platforms allow long -term holders to set up native BTC to help secure the network while winning the performance, without wrapping the assets or moving it through the chains. In turn, others allow users to use their bitcoin in decentralized financing applications, to gain exchanges and loans costs without renouncing property. And the capture is that none of these systems requires putting the keys to a third party, and none composes on the type of opaque yield games that have caused problems in the past.
At this stage, it is clear that it is no longer the pilot scale. In addition, strategies aligned on minors are quietly gaining among companies that seek to stimulate the effectiveness of the treasury without leaving the Bitcoin ecosystem. Consequently, a yield curve from Bitcoin and based on transparency begins to take shape.
Once the Bitcoin yield becomes accessible and self-detained, another problem emerges: how do you measure it? If the protocols become available and accessible, clarity is missing. Because without a standard to describe what BTC productive wins, investors, treasury bills and minors are allowed to make decisions in darkness.
Time to compare bitcoin yield
If Bitcoin can earn a return, the next logical step is a simple way to measure it.
Right now, there is no standard. Some investors consider the BTC as a coverage capital; Others have put it to work and collect the yield. However, there are inconsistencies in what the reference index should be to measure Bitcoin, because there are no real comparable active. For example, a cash team can lock the coins for a week but has no simple way to explain the risk, or a minor can transport rewards to a yield strategy, but always treat it as a diversification of the treasury.
Consider a medium -sized decentralized autonomous organization with 1,200 BTC and six months of pay in advance. He puts half in a 30-day safe on a secure protocol by Bitcoin and wins the yield. But without base, the team cannot say if it is a cautious or risky decision. The same choice could be praised that the work of the intelligent or criticized treasury as chasing it of yields, according to whom the approach analyzes.
What Bitcoin needs is a reference. Not a “risk -free rate” within the meaning of the bond market, but a reference base: reproducible, self -affirmed and wave yield which can be natively generated on bitcoin, net of costs, grouped by term durations – seven days, 30, 90. Just a structure to transform the performance of the convention into something that can be referenced and used as a reference.
Once it exists, cash policies, disclosure and strategies can be built around it, and anything above this base can be evaluated for what it is: the risk that is worth it or not.
This is where the gold metaphor breaks down. Gold does not pay you – productive bitcoin fact. Treasury bills treat the BTC as a safe balance without yield, the easier it is to see that manages capital – and simply stored it.
Opinion of: Armando Aguilar, head of training and capital growth in Terahash.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and must not be considered as legal or investment advice. The points of view, the thoughts and opinions expressed here are the only of the author and do not reflect or do not necessarily represent the opinions and opinions of Cointellegraph.