EarnPark publishes rates of up to 15% APY on USDT and up to 10% on BTC. Reaching those published rates does not require holding the platform's PARK token, which is worth saying plainly because on several platforms below, the advertised figure is one you qualify for by buying something first.
That is the narrow claim, and it is worth being careful about what it does not mean. Both of those figures are still "up to" numbers, and which rate you actually receive depends on the asset you deposit and the strategy you choose, each of which carries its own risk level and withdrawal terms. No platform in this market pays its headline rate to every account.
Updated 20 September 2026
What "up to" usually hides
Many advertised rates in this market are maximums, and a maximum is reached by meeting a condition. Three conditions come up often enough to be worth checking for by name.
The first is the platform's own token. Hold enough of it and your rate improves, hold none and you sit lower in the published range. Since the advertised figure is usually the top of that range, a user arriving with only Bitcoin or stablecoins may be reading a number they cannot reach without buying in.
The second is a loyalty tier, which is often set by what share of your portfolio sits in that same token, or by an account balance threshold. Same mechanism, harder to spot.
The third is a fixed term, where a better rate is offered in exchange for committing assets for a set period. A fixed term is easier to evaluate than the other two when its length, withdrawal restrictions and rate conditions are clearly disclosed, though that is a question about disclosure rather than a reason to prefer it.
None of these are improper. They are ordinary commercial design, and a locked or tiered rate can be a perfectly reasonable deal. The difficulty is that a comparison is only meaningful when the two sides match on asset, risk, liquidity, custody, fees, deposit size and how variable the rate is. Qualification conditions are simply one of the comparability problems that tends to go unmentioned, which is why they are worth pulling out. If you want the mechanics behind where these yields originate, our explainer on CeFi, DeFi and CeDeFi covers the underlying models, and a separate piece explains why very large APY figures are usually mathematical rather than real.
The main platforms and what their headline costs
Rates below are as advertised by each platform in September 2026, read from its own published pages, and all of them move. The right hand column is the one that decides whether the number applies to you.
| Platform | Advertised headline | What the number actually requires |
|---|---|---|
| EarnPark | Up to 15% on USDT, up to 10% on BTC | No PARK holding required, though the top figure depends on selecting a higher risk strategy that settles monthly |
| Binance.US | Up to 22.10% | One small asset, with a service fee of 9.95% to 39.95% taken out of rewards, per its own fee schedule |
| Kraken | Up to 21.53% | Cosmos only, under bonded staking, which locks the asset for an agreed term |
| Nexo | Up to 13% | Rates vary by loyalty tier, and tier is set by what share of your portfolio is held in its own token |
| Crypto.com | Up to 5% in the US | Membership level adds a further 1% to 2% on fixed term allocations |
| Coinbase | 3.50% on USDC | A paid membership, and staking rewards carry a commission taken before payout |
| Aave | Variable, set by the market | Open to anyone, but you hold your own keys and carry smart contract risk |
| AQRU | Up to 10% | Minimum balance of 250,000 USD, and 0% on both Bitcoin and Ethereum per its own FAQ |
Binance.US is the most instructive row, because its condition is neither a token nor a lock but a fee. The 22.10% leading its staking page belongs to a single small asset, and its own published fee schedule states a standard service fee of between 9.95% and 39.95% deducted from staking rewards, with its Soft-Stake product taking 90%. A fee charged against the reward rather than at withdrawal is much easier to miss, and at the upper end of that range it removes close to two fifths of what you earned.
Kraken shows the fixed term version. The 21% figure leading its staking page belongs to Cosmos under bonded staking, which by its own description temporarily locks your crypto for an agreed term. It is a real rate on a real asset. It is not the rate a person holding Bitcoin receives, and it is not available while keeping access to the asset.
Nexo shows the token version. Its published headline is up to 13% with daily compounding, and its own support pages describe a loyalty programme where tier depends on holding NEXO as a share of your portfolio, rising to 10% of the portfolio at the top tier, with a 5,000 USD minimum portfolio balance to enter the programme at all. Nexo does not publicly map the 13% figure to a specific tier, so read it as the top of a range rather than a rate you can assume.
AQRU is here only because it still appears on 2026 listicles as a retail option. Per its own pages it pays interest on USDC, quotes zero on both Bitcoin and Ethereum, requires a minimum balance of 250,000 USD, and describes several products as closed to new deposits.
Where EarnPark sits in this
PARK holdings are not part of qualifying for the published rates, and the boost that PARK offers sits on top of those rates rather than unlocking them. That is the specific thing being claimed here, and it is separate from the question of which rate you end up on.
Which rate you end up on depends on the strategy. The 15% USDT figure comes from a higher risk strategy that settles on a monthly cycle, so funds are not available on demand and withdrawal requests have to be made ahead of the scheduled date. Lower risk options pay less and behave differently. Market making strategies credit rewards daily but require a bonding period before withdrawal, which means requesting an unstake starts a wait of around thirty days for most assets, cancellable within roughly a day of asking. The DeFi strategies on USDT and USDC process withdrawals without that wait. Those mechanics matter more than a percentage point, and the live asset pages carry the current figure and terms for each strategy.
On costs, the published fee documentation gives a flat withdrawal fee of roughly two dollars for most assets and strategies. The USDT and USDC DeFi strategies are the exception and cost more, at roughly three to three dollars twenty, plus a 0.3% management fee on top of that rather than instead of it. The minimum deposit is around fifteen dollars depending on the asset and strategy. Those are the platform's own approximations as of September 2026, and it directs users to the exact current figures shown on the deposit page once a strategy and network are selected, which is where to check before committing anything.
As for where the money comes from, these strategies run on market making, on delta neutral positions that earn from perpetual futures funding rates, and on liquidity provision, which is also why returns vary with market activity rather than being fixed. The business model page sets out how the platform takes its own cut of that.
The assurance materials are worth reading for what each one covers rather than as a set. Custody runs through Fireblocks, which addresses how keys are held and transactions authorised, not whether a strategy loses money. The published proof of reserves shows assets held at a point in time, which is a different question from liabilities or liquidity, so read what it includes. The CertiK audit covers the code within its defined scope rather than the business. None of the three removes insolvency or strategy risk. There is also a public record of incidents and what changed afterwards, which is the more useful read of the set.
How these rates are produced
A yield has to come from somewhere, and a few sources account for most of what is on offer. Staking pays for helping secure a proof of stake network, with the return set largely by the protocol rather than the platform. Lending pays out of borrower demand, so the rate tracks how badly people want leverage. Market making and basis strategies earn from spreads and funding rates, which is why they can pay well in active markets and poorly in quiet ones. Protocol incentives, options premiums and liquidation income show up too. Our staking explainer goes further into the first of those.
The useful move with any unusually high rate is not to assume the worst but to ask three questions. What produces this return, are any incentives behind it temporary, and what risk is attached. A platform that will not answer the first question is telling you something.
What can actually go wrong
Rate risk is the ordinary one. Yields move, and a rate quoted today is not a rate promised for a year.
Platform risk is the serious one. Custodial platforms hold your assets, so their solvency and their security become your exposure. Reserve reporting and third party audits can provide evidence here, but each is limited to what it actually examined, and neither is a guarantee of recovery. If you would rather not carry counterparty risk at all, the alternative is self custody, which we compare in our piece on custodial and non custodial wallets.
Strategy risk is the one comparison tables tend to skip. A high risk strategy having a bad period and a platform failing are different events that deserve different reactions, and telling them apart requires knowing the risk level of what you bought. Risk labelling is not standardised across this market, as our own analysis of risk categorisation found, which makes that harder than it should be.
There is also no deposit insurance here in the sense a bank customer would recognise. How a claim would be treated in an insolvency depends on the platform's entity, terms and jurisdiction, and it is worth reading those for the specific product rather than assuming.
Comparing two platforms in ten minutes
Start with the advertised rate and look for any condition attached to it. That could be a specific asset, a token holding, a loyalty level, a balance threshold, a fixed term, a fee taken from rewards, or an eligibility limit by region or product.
Then find the rate for the asset you actually hold. Stablecoins generally pay more than Bitcoin or Ethereum because borrowing demand is stronger, so a headline driven by a smaller token says nothing about your position.
Then account for fees, including anything deducted from the rewards themselves rather than charged at withdrawal, since a commission on rewards is much easier to overlook. Then read the withdrawal terms, and specifically whether your chosen rate settles daily or monthly, and whether a bonding or unstaking wait applies.
Finally look for a risk level. Where none is published, the work does not disappear, it just falls to you, so look into the underlying strategy, the custody arrangement, the liquidity restrictions and what a loss would look like before treating that rate as comparable to another. Running these questions against stablecoin platforms specifically shows how differently two similar looking offers behave, and our yield calculator turns a percentage into an actual figure.
Who each option suits
For a beginner holding a small amount of Bitcoin, the question is arithmetic rather than principle. Work out the dollar difference after fees between a new platform and whichever custodian you already use, then weigh it against adding a counterparty and another account to manage. On small balances that difference is often smaller than it looks.
Someone holding stablecoins and comparing on return will find the widest spread here, because stablecoin yields vary more between platforms than Bitcoin yields do. This is where reading the qualifying conditions carefully pays for itself.
EarnPark may suit a reader who would rather not hold a platform token to qualify for the advertised rates, provided they are comfortable with the risk level, fees and withdrawal terms of the specific strategy they pick.
Anyone unwilling to hand over custody at all belongs in DeFi or self custody, accepting smart contract risk in place of counterparty risk. Neither option is free of risk, they are different risks.
Frequently asked questions
How do crypto interest platforms generate the yield they pay out? They deploy deposits into staking, lending or trading strategies and pass part of the return to you. The specific source determines the risk, so a platform that will not say which strategy produces a rate is worth treating carefully.
Is the advertised APY the rate I will actually receive? Often not. Headline rates are usually maximums attached to a condition, such as holding the platform's token, reaching a loyalty tier, choosing a fixed term, or depositing a particular asset. Find the condition before comparing two numbers.
Do I have to lock my crypto to earn interest? It depends on the product rather than the platform. Flexible products generally pay less and allow withdrawal on demand, while higher rates tend to carry a fixed term, a bonding period, or a monthly settlement cycle.
Which assets pay the most? Stablecoins usually pay more than Bitcoin or Ethereum, because borrowing demand for them is stronger. A platform's top advertised rate often belongs to a smaller token rather than to the assets most people hold.
What happens to my interest if the platform fails? There is no deposit insurance equivalent in this market, and how your claim is treated depends on the platform's terms, entity and jurisdiction. This is why custody arrangements and reserve reporting deserve more attention than a percentage point of yield.
Start earning
To see rates applied to a real balance rather than a marketing page, the app shows the current figure for each asset and strategy alongside its risk level and withdrawal terms before you deposit anything.
Sources used
Every competitor rate, minimum and qualifying condition above was read in September 2026 from that platform's own published product, terms, fee or FAQ pages, which is why each is described as advertised rather than independently verified. Rates move, so check the current figure before acting on any of them.
- DefiLlama for open market yield benchmarks across lending and staking venues
- The EarnPark asset pages and help centre fee documentation, both linked above, for published rates, withdrawal terms and fees, verified 20 September 2026