Digital assets and interest: a sober guide

Interest products on digital assets are often marketed side by side with ordinary bank savings, but they belong to a completely different risk class — and conflating the two is one of the most expensive misunderstandings in modern personal finance. This guide is deliberately cautious, because caution is the right starting point here.

The decisive difference is guarantee and volatility. A bank deposit account has a deposit guarantee and a value that does not swing. An interest product on digital assets has no equivalent state guarantee, carries platform risk, and an underlying asset that can fall sharply in value. Platforms such as Nexo offer such products, but the "interest" compensates for a risk that does not exist on a savings account — it is not a free lunch.

If you do explore this, do it with money you can afford to lose, never with your emergency fund or money you need in the short term. Understand the platform's terms, how the asset is managed, and what happens if the platform runs into trouble. Treat it as speculation, not as saving.

For the safe part of your finances, savings belong in a savings account, behind an emergency fund, governed by a budget. Digital assets come on top, if at all — never instead of the foundation.

Always separate speculation from saving, and risk only what you can bear to lose. This is not financial advice, and digital assets involve high risk.