All of this is high risk. It is just a question of what is more risky and what is less risky. The latter category would fill Gemini, BlockFI and Celsius with Celsius clearly being the riskiest considering their high "savings" rates and low borrowing rates. Everything else in that list is not worth discussing.Thanks for the link. I thought I was about to see some earthquake insurance type scams (you take the payments, then go bust if there's an earthquake, or in this case if XAU drops in price) but I saw Gemini in that list and I was intrigued.
Gemini Earn isn't insured by the Feds or any insurer utilised by Gemini. The scheme is down to Genesis Trading.
The business model is OK, if they're sober and serious players who know how to manage risk for the long term. This is one of the cases where I find NY DFS, FINRA, SEC, SIPC and FINCEN reassuring. I despise government monopolistic protection rackets, but I also believe there's real value to the Feds offering voluntary protection to those who choose it. If only they had the confidence to believe that people would opt in without thread of prison time - but that's for another thread.
1.81% APY is pretty good, compared to paying for gold storage. If you think that gold is a stable long term hedge and that none of Genesis, Gemini nor Paxos will collapse to zero more often than once per 60.91 years, you can get some profit.
Aside from that: Never should anybody confuse Paxos Gold with real gold or a regulated physical gold ETF. Same is valid for stablecoins which some credulous people seem to think are the ideal alternative to low-yielding USD bank accounts. Unfortunately, they are not. There is no reliable audit, no government backing and they all can vanish tomorrow .
So, this is all purely speculative!