DeFi

Jun 25 2021

Altcoin Roundup: Stablecoin pools could be the next frontier for DeFi

In times like these, when the entire cryptocurrency market is down and there is nary a sector-wide runup to be found, traders have to dig into data to see how the market dynamics may have changed to pinpoint signs of new growth.

Stablecoins are the newest trend to emerge in the decentralized finance (DeFi) arena due to the resiliency they bring to the sector, especially since protocols that are more reliant on the dollar-pegged assets continue to offer token holders low-risk yield opportunities in turbulent market conditions.

Possible evidence of stablecoins rising influence can be found in the difference between the decline in Ether’s (ETH) price and the total value locked in smart contracts. The price of Ether declined by 20% more from its peak than the decline in the total TVL of the DeFi sector.

*TVL in smart contracts vs. Ether price decline. Source:* *Glassnode*

When one takes into account that most of the crypto market saw price declines on par with what Ether experienced, the fact that the DeFi TVL fell less percentage-wise than the price of Ether points to the stability offered by stablecoins.

Stablecoin marketcap increases tenfold

The total amount of stablecoins available in the market has skyrocketed from under $15 billion to more than $113 billion over the past year, led by Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), bringing an increased level of liquidity to DeFi protocols.

*Top seven stablecoins by market capitalization. Source:* *CoinGecko*

The top stablecoins are included in a large percentage of the liquidity pool (LP) pairs available on DeFi platforms, as well as being included as a standalone token that users can deposit on protocols, such as Aave, to earn a yield. This further makes them an integral part of the burgeoning DeFi ecosystem.

Stablecoins have, in fact, led to the creation of a specialized subset of DeFi protocols, which focus on yield farming stablecoins and provide a safer way for investors to earn a yield while minimizing risk.

Early on in the DeFi craze, protocols attracted new users and deposits by offering high yields that were typically paid out in the native token of the protocol.

With a majority of DeFi tokens now down at least 75% from their all-time highs, according to data from Messari, many of the gains that users thought they made through staking and providing liquidity have evaporated, leaving little to show for the risks taken on these experimental platforms.

The battle for stablecoin liquidity

The rise of successful stablecoin-focused protocols such as Curve Finance, which is a decentralized exchange for stablecoins that uses an automated market maker to manage liquidity, platforms such as Yearn.finance, Convex Finance and Stake DAO battle to offer the best incentives that will attract a larger share of the Curve ecosystem.

Supplying stablecoins to Curve, or as a stablecoin LP like as a USDC/USDT pair, amounts to the blockchain version of a savings account. Many of the top protocols, including the three listed above, offer between 10% and 30% yields on average for stablecoins deposits.

Thanks to smart contracts, users can make deposits to automated, compounding stablecoin liquidy protocols, reducing the stress of the daily market gyrations.

*Total market capitalization of the top 100 DeFi tokens. Source:* *CoinGecko*

The aftermath of the May 19 sell-off is still impacting investors, and in times like these, the yield opportunities provided by supplying stablecoins to DeFi protocols is an attractive way to diversify a crypto portfolio and hedge against market downturns.

Want more information about diversification into the above-mentioned projects?

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Altcoin Roundup: Stablecoin pools could be the next frontier for DeFi

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Jun 20 2021

Crypto-finance company Amber Group valued at $1B following $100M raise

Cryptocurrency investment platform Amber Group has added $100 million to its coffers following a successful Series B fundraiser, bringing its total pre-money valuation to $1 billion — a major milestone for the firm as it enters its fourth year of operations.

The cash injection will be used to “expand global operations to meet client demand and develop market solutions for the world’s leading crypto investors and companies,” co-founder and CEO Michael Wu said.

Measures of trade volume and total assets under management showcase Amber Group’s significant growth over the past four years. The company now has over $1 billion in assets under management, with more than $500 billion worth of cumulative trade volumes.

“We’ve had record months over the past quarter across both client flow and on-exchange market-making volumes,” Wu said, adding:

“Since stepping up our on-screen presence, we now account for 2-3% of total trading volumes in major spot and derivative markets and are continuing to see growth. Our cumulative trading volumes have doubled from $250 billion since the beginning of the year to over $500 billion.”

In terms of notional trade volume, Amber Group ranks 21st among global exchanges, according to BitMEX data.

Amber’s assets topped $530 million in 2020, representing a 275% increase from the prior year. At the time, Wu told Cointelegraph that his company has “already proven we can provide institutional-grade integrated crypto financial services.”

In addition to its Series B backers, Amber Group has received direct funding from some of blockchain’s biggest venture funds, including Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Blockchain.com.

Venture funds have poured billions of dollars into the crypto economy over the past six months, highlighting their conviction in the new asset class. Just this month, Solana Labs finalized a $314 million private token sale, PayPal and Salesforce contributed $14 million to TRM Labs and DeFi exchange dYdX raised $65 million through a Series C fundraiser.

Crypto-finance company Amber Group valued at $1B following $100M raise

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Jun 19 2021

3 reasons why Ethereum may underperform Bitcoin in the short-term

Ether (ETH) price outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) by 173% from March 28 to May 15. The incredible bull caused the token to reach a $4,380 all-time high. However, as cryptocurrency markets initiated a sharp drop on May 12, the trend started to reverse, and since then, Ether has underperformed by 25%.

Some might say it is a technical adjustment after a strong rally. While this partially explains the move, it excludes some critical factors, including the fast advance of smart-contract network competitors and Bitcoin being adopted as an official currency for the first time.

*Ether / Bitcoin price at Binance. Source: TradingView*

Notice how the ETH/BTC ratio rallied again on June 8, reaching 0.77 despite Ether’s price remaining 36% below its all-time high and ranging near $2,800. To understand what could have been driving the ratio, analysts need to analyze Ether and Bitcoin price drivers separately.

Mike Novogratz may have been misinterpreted in his interview

Ether’s bull run potentially got an extra leg due to intense praise from institutional investors. Traders could have picked up a sense of urgency, known as FOMO, and promptly shifted their Bitcoin exposure towards the leading altcoin.

On May 13, New Yorker magazine published an interview with Mike Novogratz, the founder, and CEO of Galaxy Digital. In the conversation, Novogratz said:

“All of a sudden, you have decentralized finance and NFTs both on Ethereum at the same time roughly, with wild accelerating growth.”

Novogratz was then questioned on how much higher Ether could reach, to which he answered:

“You know, it’s dangerous to give predictions on the highs. But could it get to $5,000? Of course it could.”

While an Ethereum holder might have interpreted it as a prediction, others could have understood it as a wild guess, likely depending on general crypto market conditions.

However, roughly a week later, a report from Goldman Sachs revealed the global investment bank believed that Ether had a “high chance of overtaking Bitcoin as a dominant store of value.” Interestingly, one of the main quotes in the report was directly from Novogratz’s interview with the New Yorker.

At its peak, Binance Chain controlled 40% of DEX volume

While Ethereum has kept its 80% dominance on net value locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) has reached a 40% market share on DEX exchanges.

*PancakeSwap DEX daily volume vs. top 10. Source: DeBank*

The successful growth of the DeFi industry and non fungible token (NFT) markets caused intense congestion on the Ethereum network, raising median fees to $37 in mid-May. That bottleneck triggered an activity exodus to competing networks, and PancakeSwap was best positioned to capture that flow.

To make things worse, important DeFi projects expanded to Binance Smart Chain, including yield aggregator Harvest Finance and decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch. Investors quickly realized that the trend could continue as the competing smart-contract network provided an easy solution for dApps looking for cheaper alternatives.

No country is adopting the ‘Ethereum standard’

Bitcoin might have had a subpar performance over the past 30 days because it has failed to break the $42,000 resistance multiple times. However, a major milestone was achieved when El Salvador became the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender on June 12.

After the Central American country made the decision law, a handful of other Central and South American countries began discussing the advantages of taking a similar path.

Ethereum is undertaking a redesign that will change the issuing rate and how entities get paid to secure the network by moving away from the Proof of Work model. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is making sure that every upgrade is backward-compatible and maintaining its strict monetary policy.

That is the main reason why Ether will not outperform Bitcoin over the next 12 months, or at least until there’s a better understanding of how Ethereum network dominance of smart contracts will be.

Professional investors avoid uncertainties at all costs, and cryptocurrency markets already present plenty of that. There’s just no reason for institutional investors to ignore the risks while competing networks eat Ethereum’s lunch.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

3 reasons why Ethereum may underperform Bitcoin in the short-term

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Jun 18 2021

Perlin (PERL) price gains 100% as the focus on green energy solutions intensifies

Generating momentum and attracting investor attention can be a challenge during the best of times in the cryptocurrency market and it is an even bigger challenge when the markets are choppy like the entire crypto ecosystem has been the past couple of months.

Despite the recent downturn, Perlin (PERL), which has managed to rally 140% from a low of $0.052 on June 8 to a high of $0.134 on June 18 as its average 24-hour trading volume surged from $3 million to $122 million.

*PERL/USDT 4-hour chart. Source:* *TradingView*

Three reasons for the increase in price and demand for PERL include the release of the PERL.eco registration ledger, the launch of PerlinX on the Binance Smart Chain and attractive staking options allowing token holders to earn a yield on various cryptocurrencies.

Tokenizing real-world biological assets

PERL’s rally on June 6 and June 14 came in response to the release of PERL.eco, the “Planetary Ecosystem Registration Ledger” which enables the tokenization of real-world bioecological assets.

Introducing https://t.co/XHApjvv8Cj, the Planetary Ecosystem Registration Ledger
Tokenization of real-world bioecological assets
Read more: https://t.co/OISGvY9wgK #WorldEnvironmentDay pic.twitter.com/VfKSCmN6nf

— PERL.eco (@PERL_eco) June 5, 2021

According to the project’s blog page, PERL.eco is an “attempt to democratize the biosphere economy through liquidity pools and tokenization of biodiversity and carbon credits to decentralized finance.”

As an added incentive to hold PERL, airdrops of tokenized carbon credits will be distributed to wallets holding PERL which can be used by token holders to “offset their carbon footprint or trade on the liquidity pool when the token is released.”

PERL will also be used as the governance token of the DAO, enabling holders to vote on the distribution and fee model as well as participate in other important decisions that affect the ecosystem.

Binance Smart Chain integration leads to lower fees

A second driver of increased momentum for PERL was the mid-April launch of the protocols DeFi interface platform PerlinX on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), a move that was done in an effort to help lower transaction fees.

Operating on BSC also allowed PerlinX’s liquidity pools to be listed on PancakeSwap and helped to increase the number of farming opportunities available to the PerlinX community.

As a further bonus for PERL liquidity providers, yields earned on PancakeSwap are paid out in the protocol’s native CAKE token which can then be redeposited in the Perlin pool to earn PERL as a form of compound interest.

For PERL holders who wish to remain on the Ethereum (ETH) network, the PerlinX platform offers several options to earn a yield including simple staking as well as liquidity pools between PERL and Wrapped Ether (WETH), Binance USD (BUSD), Balancer (BAL), Dai (DAI) and USD Coin (USDC).

According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, market conditions for PERL have been favorable for some time.

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

*VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. PERL price. Source:* *Cointelegraph Markets Pro*

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for PERL has been in the green for the majority of the past 7 days and registered a score of 67 on June 14, roughly ten hours before the price increased 100% over the next two days.

With the green energy movement and concerns related to the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the forefront of global discussions, blockchain projects that offer working solutions like Perlin and its PERL.eco platform could possibly receive increased attention.

Perlin (PERL) price gains 100% as the focus on green energy solutions intensifies

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Jun 17 2021

Shanghai Man: Economist says El Salvador ‘on road to death’, salaries paid in e-CNY …

Our Man in Shanghai has refused to let recent regulations slow down the news coming from China. Enterprise blockchain, central bank digital currencies and start up projects continue to make a positive impact in a region hoping to grow economic value through technology.

Death march for El Salvador

The debate around El Salvador continued this week as media and officials tried to digest the adoption of Bitcoin as a national currency. JPMorgan stated that there was little economic benefit, and John Hopkins University professor Steve Hanke warned that the move could “completely collapse the economy” of the small nation. The former Bank of China deputy governor Wang Yongli took a very hardline approach, by stating that volatility and a lack of regulation or controls would put the economy on a “road to death.” This quote, appearing in state run media The Paper June 9, was an unusually direct and colorful statement on the issue.

Crypto innovation can be productive

Zhou Xiaoquan, a former governor of the People’s Bank of China, had a few positive things to say about cryptocurrency as a technology on June 11. He spoke at an economic summit in Shanghai and noted the cryptocurrency innovation in China can be productive when it serves the real economy. He also took some shots at other countries, stating that people would be mistaken if they thought other countries were taking the same approach towards building financial services. Zhou, who is one of the most often-quoted economists in the country, felt there was little emphasis on the relationship between financial services and economic value elsewhere in the world. Based on the wild displays at the Miami Bitcoin conference a few weeks ago, his position might be more sound than others would care to admit.

Paid in e-CNY

China’s e-CNY tests continued with the first reported mass payment of salaries in Xiong’an, a district near the capital Beijing. According to Cointelegraph, the pilot received support from a number of national banks and saw subcontractors paying workers their salaries from a digital wallet.

Industrial blockchain worth $22.6B

On June 3, a government organization issued a report entitled the China Industrial Blockchain Development Status and Trend Report. According to the report, in 2020, 222 industrial blockchain policies were issued, 12,059 new blockchain-related patent applications were approved, and 776 new blockchain enterprises were established. The report also claimed that the current market size of the industrial blockchain sector was around $22.6 billion U.S. dollars. Industrial blockchain is an area that China is eager to grab control in, leading to this explosive growth in recent years.

Only 5X the fun

Leading exchange Huobi surprised futures traders by limiting them to only 5x leverage on perpetual swaps and blocking new users from accessing the feature altogether. Futures trading, particularly highly-leveraged futures trading, had always been popular features on exchanges like OKEx and Huobi. It will be interesting to see whether these new decisions to limit risk will be damaging to these large exchanges that still somewhat adhere to regulator rules. It’s also possible that it’s a short-term solution in order to avoid scrutiny during periods of tighter control.

Futures of Singapore

While Huobi was tightening controls on futures traders, Singapore-based platform SynFutures was completing a Series A for $14 million. The round was led by Polychain Capital and included names like Framework Capital, Pantera Capital, Bybit, Kronos Research, WOO Ventures, Wintermute, and IOSG Ventures. SynFutures is creating a trustless derivatives market where users can take positions on assets or anything that has an accurate feed, including Bitcoin, the price of gold, or even the Bitcoin hashrate. What many people don’t know is that the SynFutures team is composed of members from Matrixport, a financial service app that was an offshoot of massive Chinese mining conglomerate Bitmain. Now you know the whole story!

This weekly roundup of news from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong attempts to curate the industry’s most important news, including influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape, and enterprise blockchain integrations.

Shanghai Man: Economist says El Salvador \’on road to death\’, salaries paid in e-CNY …

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