I often get asked about crypto. My response often surprises people: I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.

That might sound odd given crypto’s massive popularity (though many holders are no doubt regretting their buys these days, given the swan dive Bitcoin and its ilk have been on).

Nope, I avoid Bitcoin because I (and readers of my CEF Insider service) are interested in dividend income. And you won’t find any of that in crypto. Plus it’s far more volatile than we’d like. All of this is why, when we want tech exposure, we look to CEFs holding top-quality tech stocks. (I’ve got two funds for you below that hold some of the very best techs out there—and pay rich 7.7%+ dividends, too.)

Of course, crypto fans talk about their world as a land of vast riches, and surely a well-timed bet in crypto can yield vast riches, right?

Well, sure. But really, any well-timed bet on anything can yield vast riches. Betting that oil would go negative in early 2020 could’ve made you a multibillionaire overnight. Trouble is, no one did that because, well, the very idea seemed absurd.

But it did happen! Similarly, you can get lucky betting on silly things like meme coins (another crypto-ish trend of 2025), NFTs (2021) or other risky assets. But getting lucky is not, of course, a strategy for building lasting wealth.

Why Bitcoin Is Crashing (and 2 Much Better Dividend-Paying Alternatives)

For most of 2025, it seemed like betting against crypto was foolish. The President of the United States, after all, promised to make the US the “crypto capital of the world.” What’s more, the Trump family has reportedly earned nearly $2 billion related to crypto projects.

This was about as bullish a signal for crypto as there could be. Yet Bitcoin (in green below) still hit a wall this year, while pretty well everything else has rallied …

Bitcoin Slumps, While Stocks (and 2 Top Tech CEFs) Surge

Sure, investors did bid up Bitcoin through most of 2025. Yet the largest cryptocurrency out there is down year-to-date. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 (shown by the most popular index fund, in purple) is still well up, even after recent volatility.

Clearly, buying Bitcoin meant buying into violent swings and, over the long term, losses for those who timed the market poorly or were just unlucky.

2 High-Yielding Tech CEFs That “Convert” Stock Gains to Cash

Now note the orange and blue lines in the above chart. Those are two CEFs that members of my CEF Insider service will recognize: the BlackRock Science and Technology Trust (BST) and BlackRock Science and Technology Term Trust (BSTZ). They focus on US tech stocks (along with some private-equity plays) and yield 7.7% and 9% respectively.

Beyond having yields more than seven times higher than the typical S&P 500 stock, both funds have been tracking the S&P 500 in 2025 as they deliver stock-like performance and bond-like income.

This “best of both worlds” setup is what draws us to these funds: We get fast-growing tech firms like NVIDIA (NVDA), Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT), plus the kind of income you’d expect from a bond.

But that’s not all: This chart is where the real excitement is.

Widening Discounts on Strong Performance

Simply put, both BST and BSTZ have given index-like performance and high, reliable income thanks to their strong portfolios. But investors have still punished them by marking them down far below their net asset value (NAV)! These funds’ market prices now average around a 9.6% discount to NAV (or the value of their portfolios, in other words).

The recent selloff has further widened that discount, with both CEFs going from around 6% a month ago to today’s levels. We’ve seen this before. In fact, we see it in this very chart. See how the discounts were so wide in January? That’s helped goose these funds’ total returns since, even after both of their discounts widened.

Moreover, in the long run, this widening lets us follow our proven CEF strategy: Buy more BST and BSTZ in short-term panics, collect their dividends, then wait for the funds to swing back to smaller discounts during a bull run. That would be a good time to sell, buy other oversold CEFs, rinse and repeat.

This is the key to making the most of CEFs, and it actually does echo the kind of trades crypto traders make. The difference is that these funds pay dividends and have much less volatility, while Bitcoin has zero income and requires the kind of timing only a lucky gambler could have. That’s not something we disciplined investors have any interest in.

— Michael Foster

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Source: Contrarian Outlook