Digital Credit vs. Bonds, Fixed Deposits and Dividend Stocks: Yield and Risk

Short answer: Digital Credit pays several times what fixed deposits, government bonds or dividend stocks pay: 9 to 15% instead of 2 to 4%. The premium is the price for risks the others don't have: no repayment date, no deposit insurance, price crashes like bitcoin's and dividends that depend on a single company. Digital Credit is no substitute for a fixed deposit.

Your fixed deposit pays 2.4%, prices rise by 2.8%. Meanwhile Strategy's STRC pays 12% a year, monthly, backed by bitcoin. Is it simply the better fixed deposit? This comparison of Digital Credit vs. bonds, fixed deposits and dividend stocks uses real figures from November 2026 to show what you get for the higher yield and what you give up for it.

Four investments, four different promises

All four pay you money regularly. But they promise very different things:

Digital Credit means preferred stock of companies that use the money to buy bitcoin. How it is built is explained in the guide Digital Credit explained. Important for the comparison: legally, a preferred stock is a share, not a loan. It has no repayment date, and the board has to declare every dividend anew.

Yields compared: what you get today

This is what each investment pays you if you buy or open it today:

In francs it looks different: the Swiss National Bank has its policy rate at 0%. A 2-year Kassenobligation (a Swiss medium-term bank note) paid 0.49% on average in September 2026, a savings account 0.07%, a 10-year Swiss government bond 0.59%. Nestlé paid a 3.61% dividend.

Fixed deposits and Kassenobligationen are averages across all banks. Individual offers are higher. For stocks and Digital Credit, it is the effective yield: dividend divided by today's price. The live figures for all securities are in the Digital Credit overview.

How the effective yield comes about and why it differs from the dividend rate is explained in Effective yield, BTC coverage and BTC price at 1×.

What remains after inflation

Interest only helps you if it is above inflation. In October 2026, prices rose by 2.8% in Germany and 3.5% in Austria. In Switzerland it was 1.0% in September.

So if you hold only fixed deposits, you get a little poorer year after year. Why that is no accident is shown in the article on inflation and loss of purchasing power.

Why Digital Credit pays so much more

No company pays 12% if it could borrow money at 4%. The difference to the safe investment in the same currency is the risk premium. It tells you how much risk the market sees in a security.

Almost 8 percentage points above the state: that is how much the market demands for giving money to Strategy instead of the US, with no repayment date and behind all debt. This yield is no gift. It is the payment for the risks in the next three sections.

Volatility: June 2026 as a test

In June 2026, bitcoin fell sharply within four weeks. This is how the four investments reacted, from May 29, 2026 to their respective lows in June:

Closing prices from Yahoo Finance, German government bond yield from the Deutsche Bundesbank.

In a bitcoin crisis, Digital Credit behaves like a bitcoin investment, not like an interest-rate product. STRC is meant to stay around $100 thanks to its variable rate, and still fell more than bitcoin. Why is explained in The risks of bitcoin preferred stock.

Safety: who gets paid first

When a debtor can no longer pay, there is a fixed order. The higher up you stand, the safer your money:

1. Fixed deposit up to €100’000 per bank and person (EU deposit guarantee) or CHF 100’000 (esisuisse). Even if the bank goes bust, you get this amount back.
2. Government bond: Germany or Switzerland would have to become insolvent.
3. Corporate bond: a company's creditors are paid before all shareholders.
4. Digital Credit: preferred stock comes after all debt, but before common stock.
5. Dividend stock: common shareholders get whatever is left at the end.

So Digital Credit ranks ahead of the dividend stock, but behind every bond. On top of that there is a difference the ranking doesn't show: Allianz earns its dividend in the insurance business. Strategy pays its dividends from a cash reserve, from selling new shares and, if necessary, from selling bitcoin.

BTC coverage protects against a total loss: on Nov 13, 2026, STRF was backed by 7.5 times as much bitcoin as needed for all claims up to and including STRF; SATS only 1.45 times. If bitcoin falls, coverage falls in the same proportion. How far bitcoin could fall according to the site's model is shown by the Power Law floor in the methodology.

Maturity: do you get your money back?

Fixed deposits and bonds have a fixed end. On day X you get the face value back, regardless of where interest rates stand by then. If you hold a German government bond to maturity, you have no price risk.

Digital Credit has no end. If you want your money back, you have to sell on the exchange, at that day's price. With fixed rates, that price depends heavily on the level of interest rates:

On the upside, on the other hand, the price is often capped: Strategy may redeem STRC at $101, Strive SATA at $110. A dividend stock can rise over the years; a preferred stock hardly can.

Dividends: preferred stock or dividend stock?

Both are called stock, both pay dividends. Still, they are different:

• The dividend stock pays out of profits. If the business grows, the dividend usually grows too. Allianz paid €17.10 per share in May 2026. In a crisis it can fall.
• The preferred stock pays a fixed amount on a $100 stated amount, regardless of how the business is doing. It never grows. It can fall (variable rates) or be skipped.

If a dividend is skipped, most bitcoin preferred stocks pay it later (cumulative). With STRD it lapses. The four fixed-rate securities from Strategy are compared in STRF, STRK, STRD, STRE compared, the variable rate in STRC (Stretch) explained.

Currency: your income in euros or francs

Fixed deposits, German government bonds and many dividend stocks pay in your currency. Almost all bitcoin preferred stocks pay in dollars. Exceptions: STRE in euros, MORE in pounds, BTC-PREF-A in kronor.

From Jan 2, 2025 to Nov 12, 2026, the dollar lost about 7% against the euro and 8% against the franc. At a 12% dividend, that eats more than half a year of income. If you count in francs, you carry this risk with STRE as well.

Worked example: €10’000 or CHF 10’000 for one year

What an amount in Digital Credit pays month by month, and what a lower rate or a weaker dollar changes, you can work out here:

Taxes in brief

In Germany, interest and dividends are both subject to 25% flat-rate withholding tax (Abgeltungsteuer) plus the solidarity surcharge, after the saver's allowance of €1’000 a year. In Austria it is 25% KESt (capital gains tax) on bank interest and 27.5% on bond interest and dividends. In Switzerland, interest and dividends count as income. On Swiss dividends and on bank interest above CHF 200 a year, the state withholds 35% withholding tax (Verrechnungssteuer), which you reclaim.

With Digital Credit from the US, a possible US withholding tax is added, and the issuer classifies some distributions in the US as return of capital. What applies to you depends on where you live and on your brokerage account.

Which investment for what?

The four investments compete with each other less than it seems. Each solves a different problem:

If you buy Digital Credit instead of a fixed deposit because of the yield, you swap a bank balance for a bitcoin risk. If you buy it instead of bitcoin, you swap bitcoin's growth for a dividend without growth. Both can make sense, as long as you know what you are swapping.