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Dividends for Degens
Matt Ober
September 15, 2025
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Everyone loves dividends. Even the Degens!
When I think about having a dividend strategy and focusing on monthly cash flow, I typically think of someone who is retired or close to retirement. After reading this Bloomberg article, I am now surprised to hear how much dividends are part of the Degenerate Economy trend.
“The broad category of income-generating ETFs captured one in six dollars sent to equity ETFs as a whole in 2025, bringing the overall size of the sector to $750 billion. The most aggressive ones — dangling yields above 8% — have quadrupled in size in just three years. The craze has sparked a network of YouTube channels and Discord servers, as well as the r/dividends forum on Reddit, which has grown more than tenfold over the last five years to 780,000 members today.”
The crazy thing is that a lot of these ETFs are full of derivatives, which likely aren’t fully understood by investors. “A new, faster-growing generation of funds offers payouts that are much higher – sometimes above 100%. Take one product, operating under the ticker MSTY, that is tied to the volatile stock of the Bitcoin-hoarding company known as Strategy.”
I am all for cashflowing assets. I think everyone I know would love some more cash flow on a monthly basis. I wonder, though, if some of these ETFs offering crazy high dividend yields don’t eventually blow up!
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