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DeFi’s money markets are finally luring in institutional investors

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Bitcoin’s bull run from last year has caused even some of its biggest skeptics to soften their stance. From economists to hedge fund managers, the world is opening itself up to technology, and at the center of this movement is decentralized finance, or DeFi. While the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies has hit $2 trillion, worth as much as Apple, it’s the promise of DeFi — a small corner of the blockchain industry today — that’s grabbing the attention of institutional investors.

As Bitcoin’s (BTC) bullish trend persists, interest-bearing crypto products have become all the rage. Some services offer up to 8% returns on Bitcoin holdings. For investors who are already expecting a rise in value, this can be incredibly useful for maintaining cash flow without selling any assets.

The three main factors solidifying institutional interest in Bitcoin are the current historically low interest rates, the inflation rate and geopolitical instability. With near-zero interest rates expected for the foreseeable future, investors are gearing up to move their funds into alternative locations for securing wealth.

The United States Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target has incited concern in investors fearing devaluation, and with tensions between the U.S. and China on a precarious edge, portfolios denominated in U.S. dollars are becoming riskier by the day.

A market for money

Buying, storing and using cryptocurrencies securely is still quite a complex ordeal — far more involved than setting up a bank account. However, according to Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock — a global investment management fund with nearly $9 trillion in assets under management — Bitcoin could evolve into a global market asset and achieve new highs in the upcoming years.

In the traditional financial system, money markets are parts of the economy that issue short-term funds. They usually deal with loans for periods of a year or less, and offer services like borrowing and lending, buying and selling, with wholesale trading taking place over the counter. Money markets are composed of short-term, highly liquid assets and are part of the broader financial markets system.

Money markets are traditionally very complicated, with expensive overheads and hidden fees pushing most investors to hire a fund manager. However, their existence is paramount to operating a modern financial economy. They incentivize people to lend money in the short term and allocate capital toward productive use. This improves the overall market’s efficiency while helping financial institutions meet their goals. Basically, anyone with extra cash on hand can earn interest on deposits.

Money markets are composed of different kinds of securities, such as short-term treasuries, certificates of deposits, repurchase agreements and mutual funds, among others. These funds generally consist of shares that cost $1.

On the other hand, capital markets are dedicated to the trade of long-term debt and equity instruments, and point to the entire stock and bond market. Using a computer, anyone can purchase or sell assets in mere seconds, but companies issuing the stock do so to raise funds for more long-term operations. These stocks fluctuate, and unlike money market products, they have no expiration date.

Since money market investments are virtually risk-free, they often come with meager interest rates as well. This means that they will not produce huge gains or display substantial growth, compared with riskier assets like stocks and bonds.

DeFi vs. the world?

To hedge against currency risk, institutions have started using Bitcoin, and retail investors are following their lead. More than 60% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply hasn’t moved since 2018, and BTC is predicted to push well above $100,000 in the next 24 months.

If the current trend carries forward, investors will continue to stockpile BTC. However, while much of the supply of the world’s first cryptocurrency remains in storage, the DeFi industry is constantly producing alternative platforms for interest-bearing payments through smart contracts, which increases transparency by allowing investors to view and track on-chain funds.

The average return for DeFi products is also much higher than in traditional money markets, with some platforms even offering double-digit annual percentage yields on deposits. From asset management to auditing smart contracts, the DeFi space is creating decentralized infrastructure for scalable money markets.

According to Stani Kulechov, co-founder of the Aave DeFi protocol, rates are high during bull markets because the funds are used to leverage more capital, with the cost of margin pushing up the yield. “New innovation in DeFi is consuming more stablecoins, which further increases the yield. Unless there is a new capital injection — these rates might stick for a while,” he said.

The Ethereum network currently hosts most of the DeFi applications, and this has barred tokens that aren’t available on the network from participating in decentralized finance. Bitcoin, for example, despite being the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has only recently found its way onto DeFi platforms.

Related: DeFi yield farming, explained

With Kava’s Hard Protocol, investors can yield farm using Bitcoin and other non-ERC-20 tokens like XRP and Binance Coin (BNB). Backed by some prominent names (Ripple, Arrington XRP Capital and Digital Asset Capital Management, among others), the platforms allow users to stake their cryptocurrencies into a pool of assets, which is lent out to borrowers to generate interest.

The team also plans to add support for Ethereum-based tokens in the near future. The network’s upgrade to Kava 5.1, which was postponed to April 8 after failing to reach the required quorum, will also introduce the Hard Protocol V2, bringing powerful incentivization schemes and enhancements to its governance model.

Most loans in DeFi are overcollateralized, meaning the pool always has more money than it lends out. In case the value of the issued token drops, funds in the pool are liquidated to compensate.

According to Anton Bukov, co-founder of decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch, blockchains are the first-ever unbiased executors in human history — very limited, but ultimately fair — and could deliver new services and new flows of interactions in future. “Developers are doing their best to solve potential dishonesty issues of existing flows and invent new flows by replacing intermediaries,” he said.

By creating an automated platform to borrow and lend assets, decentralized finance enables money markets without intermediaries, custodians or the high fees that stem from high infrastructural costs.

Honest work

Of the many trends DeFi has set into motion over the last few years, yield farming has attracted quite a lot of attention. Yield farming is when the network rewards liquidity providers with tokens that can be further invested into other platforms to generate more liquidity tokens.

Simple in concept, yield farmers are some of the most vigilant traders out there, constantly switching up their strategies to maximize their yield and tracking rates across all platforms to ensure they’re getting the sweetest deal. The potential rate of return can become obscenely high, but it’s still unclear whether yield farming is just a fad or a phenomenon in the making. Kulechov added:

“Yield farming is simply a way to distribute governance power to users and stakeholders. What actually matters is whether the product itself would find protocol market/fit. Most successful governance power distributions with yield farming have been with protocols that have found protocol market/fit before such programs.”

Yield farming has an incredibly positive feedback loop, with an increase in participation pushing the value of its governance token up, driving further growth. According to Kava CEO Brian Kerr, while this feedback loop can produce very positive results in bull markets, it can have entirely the opposite effects in falling markets:

“It will be up to the governance groups of the various projects to navigate bear markets effectively, by ratcheting back rewards before a full-on death spiral occurs. Regardless of bull or bear markets, yield farming will be a mainstay in blockchain projects for years to come.”

Money markets are the pillars of our global financial system, but most of its transactions occur between financial institutions like banks and other companies in time deposit markets. However, some of these transactions do find their way to consumers through money market mutual funds and other investment vehicles.

Decentralization is the next frontier for finance, and as prominent investors continue to engage with the DeFi space, a decentralized economy seems all but inevitable. Participating in the burgeoning environment may be a risky bet today, but what decentralized finance platforms learn now will be the foundation of the robust DeFi applications of the future. According to Bukov, the higher interest rates of DeFi platforms are “absolutely sustainable.” He added:

“Higher profits are usually involved with higher risks. So the risk-profit model of all these opportunities is always nearly balanced. Normalizing risks would decrease profits because more participants will join to share the rewards.”

From smart contract malfunctions to the unauthorized withdrawal of community funds, the DeFi space is a place of both miracles and nightmares. DeFi-based yield farming platforms are still in their very early stages, and while the numbers can be all too tempting at times, it’s crucial to do your own research before investing in any platform or asset.

DeFi’s money markets are finally luring in institutional investors

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Cryptocurrency Exchange Coinbase is Permitting Traders and Investors to Purchase Stocks

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According to the latest announcement, Coinbase, an American cryptocurrency exchange platform, is all set to go live within two weeks, allowing investors and traders to purchase stocks in the trading platform. 

An official announcement states that Coinbase’s stock will begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol COIN on April 14, 2021.

Founded in 2012, Coinbase is a leading U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange that operates remote-first without an official physical headquarters. It has a strong presence in the cryptocurrency market. The company aims to build the crypto economy to establish a transparent financial system enabled by cryptocurrency assets.

Initially, last year in December 2020, a leading crypto exchange platform announced that it is going public. Brian Armstrong expressed concerns about Bitcoin trading at that time, and despite that, Armstrong appears confident that whatever bitcoin is incurring, it is likely the start of something big.

After deciding to go live, the crypto exchange filed Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As things are now going in the right direction, one can only conclude that the exchange passed the financial agency’s approval procedure, which is applied to all firms requesting public trade options.

As a part of this announcement, Armstrong commented that we are committed to bringing the potential of crypto to everyone. He further stated that we would continue to strive to provide customers with the highest levels of security, trust, and transparency during times of intense demand. 

The Period of Extreme Demand Has Truly Arrived, Says Armstrong

In December 2020, when Armstrong announced that Coinbase plans to go public, he noted that all have to believe that we are still in the initial stages and that there’s a lot more to come. Now, as Bitcoin is trading for more than $59,000 per unit, it seems like Armstrong’s statement has truly arrived. 

Many major companies, including Tesla, Mastercard, Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Visa, and others, are showing interest in crypto space and allowing crypto payments for goods and services. Tesla announced that people can now buy a Tesla with bitcoin in the U.S. Similarly, Bank of New York Mellon Corp., according to the announcements, is also investing in a cryptocurrency startup named Fireblocks to embrace digital assets. Visa, a major credit card provider, also announced that it is collaborating with cryptocurrency exchange platform and card issuer Crypto.com to facilitate a crypto settlement system for fiat transactions. 

To get instant updates about Blockchain Technology and to learn more about online Blockchain Certifications, check out Blockchain Council. 

Cryptocurrency Exchange Coinbase is Permitting Traders and Investors to Purchase Stocks

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Visa Testing Crypto-Based Transaction Settlement Systems

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The COVID-19 pandemic has done quite a number on the world’s economy, one many parts of society have yet to recover from. The blockchain industry, however, managed to get severely crippled by it and recover to brand new all-time highs directly after. One of the crypto space in general’s key wins, particularly Bitcoin’s was a new frenzy of positive sentiments regarding both companies and institutions, as both started to make heavy investments by the millions of USD into the space.

Visa Seeing Crypto Demand

Many nations tried to counteract the damage of the economic downfall by printing money. They did so by way of various stimulus packages. This, alongside the fears of inflation and the budding NFT space, has growth be the prime idea behind the crypto space at large. The industry itself is growing and people hold fears that the fiat space is weakening. Many a company has now incorporated crypto services into its offering, with Visa being one of the more prominent ones.

Guy Sheffield stands as the Head of Crypto at Visa, and gave a public statement to Reuters about the matter. He highlighted that the demand to hold, use, and otherwise access digital currencies have increased by the company’s customers. Thus, Visa’s clients are demanding products to help provide access to these things for the consumer.

crypto

Innovating With The Times

Visa is aiming big, making an announcement on Monday. This announcement revealed that it will allow for crypto-based payment settlements in the future, having partnered with the Anchorage crypto bank and the Crypto.com exchange platform for the pilot as a whole. Users of Crypto.com boasting a prepaid Visa card from said exchange will be capable of paying for goods through it. All they need to do is top it up with their respective crypto balances.

Prior to this move, any sort of settlement like this would involve Crypto.com wiring fiat currency to Visa at the end of each day in order to settle any processed transactions of that day. This pilot, however, will see Visa using USD Coin (USDC) in order to settle transactions. USDC is a stablecoin pegged 1:1 on the USD, making every USDC worth one USD proper.

Through this action, Visa has chosen the Ethereum blockchain to settle its various transactions and completely removing the fiat part of these crypto settlements. This, in turn, means that Crypto.com will now make use of USDC in order to settle transactions.

Plans To Expand

This new settlement service will allow Visa to significantly speed up the speed at which settlements are made, at the same time significantly decreasing its cost. As it stands now, the exact scope and volume of the pilot program between Visa and Crypto.com is unclear, but Visa made it clear that it plans to extend this offering to other partners, as well.

Visa Testing Crypto-Based Transaction Settlement Systems

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Blockchain Technology as an Application to Combat Covid-19

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With the past year being a wave stirrer in the lives of one and all, the pandemic has certainly left us all hoping for better things to come. The advent of the coronavirus has largely impacted industries, businesses, communities, and countries as a whole. By affecting each and every path of life, the pandemic has made it difficult for individuals to attain a gasp of air.

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With the number of cases increasing day after day, the death toll had been skyrocketing on to time. As a result, the economy is hit by a hard blow with Sensex falling every other day. It resulted in most of the brands being shut down with big companies facing the loss of a few million.

This emerged the dire need for having a technological solution addressing the growing concern. With governments largely scrambling to address the underlying issues, a number of solutions based on Blockchain Technology in COVID-19 have emerged to address the worldwide health crisis.

Overview of blockchain technology as an application to combat the pandemic:

A blockchain is an important tool that establishes a transparent and efficient healthcare business model, completely based on a high level of accuracy and trust. This is because the technology is a tamper-proof one, and creates the first line of rapid protection, supported by a vast network of connected devices.

This is where the primary goal lies in staying alert about the outbreaks and hence the use of the platform is largely beneficial to address the situation and prevent pandemics. Blockchain Technology as an Application does so by facilitating the early detection technique and efficiently tracks drug trials while managing the impact of treatment and outbreaks.

Can blockchain aid to prevent pandemics?

The technological solution helps individuals and organizations to share any information, data, and transaction in a real team between the relevant parties. The information is shared as nodes in the chain, in a completely secured manner.

The onset of such a technology would have managed to combat the pandemic, had there been a blockchain that WHO and the healthy Ministry in each country and hospitals were connected through. This would have enabled them to share relevant information about any communicable disease such as covid 19. This would have helped to spread the word faster and stop the pandemic from spreading.

How does blockchain help to combat Covid 19?

Blockchain solutions during covid-19, as mentioned earlier, is helpful to track public health data surveillance, and especially with the outbreaks of diseases like this. With increased transparency, it helps to attain a more accurate and efficient response. This can help treatments to prosper swiftly as they would allow for rapid data processing. This enables early detection of symptoms prior to them spreading to being epidemic. This will also enable the agencies to keep track of the virus spread and combat new cases.

Tracking donations:

With trust being a major issue in this situation, blockchain has a cure here too. With its help, donors can view the places where there is a dire need to attain funds. This can help them to track the donations until and unless they are offered verification of the contributions being received. The technological solutions embrace transparency to regulate donations and their usage.

Manages crises:

Blockchain has the ability to alert the public instantly about the advent of the virus and by global institutes such as WHO. Apart from this, blockchain can also enable governments with recommendations of not contracting the virus. It helps to secure a platform for all concerned authorities including medical staff, governments, health organizations, media, and more to stay updated and update each other on the same.

Track medical supply chain:

The spread of Covid 19 witnessed a shortage in the supply of sanitizers and facial masks. As a result of the shortage, a few ill-deed individuals were taking advantage to generate fake products and earn more. Blockchain technology can fill the gap and offer smart contracts and accurate data for the technology to eliminate any occurrence of the breach between the needy and the supplies.

As the supply chain involves multiple parties, hence the entire process promises a tamper-proof procedure, enabling individuals to track the process. The technology is largely helpful in streamlining the medical supply chain and ensures that both doctors and patients have equal access to the tools whenever needed.

Conclusion:

Thus the usage of the blockchain to share the information would have saved the world from succumbing to the pain and how. With the world being completely naive to something as disastrous as Covid 19, it is extremely important to reassess decisions made and embrace new promising technologies. This is how both regulations and technology can bank on one another to safeguard the world from such pandemics ever in the future.

Blockchain Technology as an Application to Combat Covid-19

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Growth hacker uses crypto to help the unhoused

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Before the 2017 bull run, growth hacker Giacomo Arcaro often slept in his car. Now an entrepreneur who speaks at crypto conferences and forums, he is looking for ways to promote adoption and help those financially struggling as a result of the ongoing pandemic.

Last weekend, Arcaro prepared to issue up to $50,000 in Ether (ETH) crypto loans to homeless and unhoused people in New York City. After speaking with some of the roughly 80,000 individuals in the city’s homeless population on a different occasion — and giving away some Bitcoin (BTC) in the process — he said many were, unsurprisingly, asking for money for necessities like blankets or food. However, some reportedly wanted funds to buy equipment to work remotely — e.g. microphones.

On Mar. 20, the growth hacker set up posters on Wall Street with crypto expert Eloisa Marchesoni and listened to business pitches from unhoused individuals, many of whom don’t have the ability to apply for a loan through traditional banks. Arcaro approved 12.5 ETH — roughly $22,000 at the time of publication — in loans, with an average of 0.5 ETH going to each person.

“Some interesting ideas that Eloisa and I vetted and funded were related to recycling, investing in the purchase of equipment to collect cans and bottles,” said Arcaro. “One woman was going to use the ETH to then buy a professional trash picker and stroller cart to carry the cans and bottles to the nearest store where she will drop them off each time to get some money in return.”

Photo courtesy of Giacomo Arcaro

In approving the crypto loans, the growth hacker sent the ETH directly to Coinbase wallets on the recipients’ smartphones with the stipulation that should they pay him back in the future, he would double the loan and continue the relationship. If they immediately cash out, he would not assist them again.

“They did not easily accept the idea of having to download Coinbase Wallet on their phones and having to handle intangible money. It was harder than I thought to speak to them about Ether.”

Though Arcaro acknowledged this is not the typical way many try to help the homeless in the United States — often by donating to non-profit organizations, giving cash directly to them on the street or through an online fundraiser — his approach is reportedly based on the work of Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. The Bangladeshi social entrepreneur pioneered much of the work around microcredits in the 70s and 80s, giving small loans to many unbanked people in poor communities.

“If these guys are smart, they can do all sorts of microinvestments,” said Arcaro. “If they keep this money in their wallets and stake it, they may earn $2 or $3 per day — which is a lot for a homeless person.”

Though it is difficult to get a true count, some estimate that there are more than 150 million individuals without homes or proper shelter around the world. In early 2020, there were more than 580,000 people homeless in the United States, with many in New York City and Los Angeles. However, with the economic impact of the pandemic, that number has likely increased significantly.

“I can guess there’s a lot of really smart people that have some issues with COVID and they are in the streets,” said Arcaro. “They cannot access [credit], they cannot open any bank account, they cannot ask for mortgages.”

Arcaro’s methods require that any unhoused or homeless person requesting a crypto loan have a smartphone capable of supporting Coinbase Wallet. Though he said “all the homeless” he encountered had access to the internet, that may not always be the case outside of a major hub like New York City. A 2018 study showed that the majority of homeless people in the U.S. do have access to mobile phones, while a separate report from the City Bar Justice Center cited smartphones and internet access as a major factor in shortening periods of homelessness.

“If you’re not comfortable with crypto, it’s not for you, but [this is for] a ‘new kind’ of homeless. The ‘startup’ homeless, or the people who want to step out of poverty […] It’s for people who want to do something with their life but they have bad luck.”

Following the rollout on Wall Street, Arcaro said he would circle back in about a month to check in on the loan recipients to address any technical or logistical issues. He said he may eventually try the experiment in Los Angeles and San Francisco as well as internationally in Germany, Dubai, and Thailand.

Growth hacker uses crypto to help the unhoused

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Payment Network Visa Now Uses USDC as Settlement Currency

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US credit card-issuing company Visa announced on Monday its intention of facilitating crypto payments through its network.

Visa Completes First Crypto Pilot Test

Visa strategic partner Crypto.com did a pilot transaction with the crypto firm settling a portion of its debts in US Dollar Coin (USDC), a “stablecoin” pegged to the US Dollar 1 to 1. 

The transaction was completed over the Ethereum network- a decentralized blockchain offering that has nurtured decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). 

Visa is fast-tracking its plans to enable more of its strategic partners to enjoy this feature later on in the year.

The move, which is described as an industry-first merge of digital and fiat-focused institutions, is riding on the back of an upsurge in cryptocurrencies worldwide. 

Wider adoption has seen legacy banks like the Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon, investment company BlackRock Inc. and the fellow US credit card company MasterCard embracing digital currencies in the past month.

This rise in institutional demand for crypto-assets has been fostered mainly by the foremost cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which has made significant rallies in the past year. In a show of faith and growing acceptance, Tesla placed $1.5 billion worth of investments into Bitcoin in early February.

In a subsequent announcement, Tesla boss Elon Musk said BTC will now be accepted in exchange for Tesla’s all-electric autonomous sedans. This move has seen BTC make new ATHs climaxing at $61,000 last week.

Visa’s latest move sees it address a significant problem plaguing crypto’s adoption. Usually, if a crypto owner pays for purchases from his crypto wallet, the digital asset needs to be converted to fiat at the end of the day.

This would lead to additional costs at the point of conversion. With this latest offering, Visa would enable its partners to settle their financial obligations using USDC, making it far easier for funds to be moved between entities.

The US payments giant has been making digital headway into the crypto-economy for some months now. In a new partnership with the first federally chartered digital bank Anchorage, Visa received its USDC funds in the company’s Ethereum address with the crypto company serving as the custodian.

Visa Eyes CBDCs Use On Its Platform

This pilot test is significant for the US payments firm as it leads to the adoption of digital assets for daily transactions. The company is also looking to benefit from the frenzy surrounding central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The digital assets sanctioned by the host country’s apex bank draw much interest from financial bodies globally.

In a recently published report, the Bank of International Settlements noted that over 80% of global central banks actively explored a digital version of their national currency. With this growing interest, Visa published a whitepaper in which it proposed a CBDC facility where transactions can be executed without the need for an internet connection.

According to the San Francisco firm, the growing adoption of cryptocurrencies is forcing them to ask many questions, and CBDCs could be a way they can provide the needed answers.

Payment Network Visa Now Uses USDC as Settlement Currency

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