4.4 percent. That is the annual yield on SoFi Earn, a tokenised deposit called SOFIE that SoFi Bank announced on 22 October. SoFi’s own rate sheet lists the same figure.
Each SOFIE is worth $1 on deposit at the bank, and the deposit is FDIC-insured within applicable limits. SoFi says no other US national bank has offered tokenised deposits directly to consumers.
Customers can convert SOFIE one to one into SoFiUSD, the bank’s stablecoin, to buy crypto or send money to a supported external wallet at any hour. Interest accrues only until the deposit is converted. The report describes conversion to SoFiUSD as the route to buying crypto or reaching an external wallet, so the uninsured step is built into the main use.
That is where the protection ends. SoFiUSD, like other stablecoins, is not an FDIC-insured deposit, so a customer who converts in order to move money has stepped outside the insurance the product is sold on.
The product sits inside SoFi Crypto, and SoFi plans to finish rolling it out to its crypto members in November, so availability may vary until then. The Block’s report does not name the blockchain the token runs on.
It builds on SoFi’s earlier SoFiUSD stablecoin, and adds the interest-bearing layer that stablecoins issued under the new US rules generally cannot offer.
A token that is insured while it sits still and uninsured once it moves is a trade-off worth seeing stated plainly. Whether customers read the small print the same way is the open question.
