Month: September 2021

DeFi has grown tremendously in scale and scope in recent years. The Ethereum blockchain, which underpins much of DeFi activity, settled $2.5trn-worth of transactions in the second quarter of 2021, including payments and transactions to facilitate trading and lending. (Visa, a payments giant, settled about the same amount in the same period; Nasdaq, a stock exchange, traded six times as much.) Around $90bn of collateral is being used for various DeFi functions, compared with less than $1bn in early 2018. More than half is held in the five most popular DeFi applications, but developers are working on more than a hundred others, dozens of which are rapidly amassing assets. Innovations, such as automated marketmakers, arbitrage systems and self-stabilising currency regimes, are already pushing the boundaries of financial technology.

Subscribe to The Economist for the full article

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/09/18/adventures-in-defi-land

The war over money is heating up: For the first time in more than a century, the dollar’s supremacy is being challenged. The rise of cryptocurrencies and “stablecoins” has spurred a rethinking of what a currency is, who regulates it, and what it means when it’s no longer controlled by a national government. The dollar itself may be getting an overhaul, transformed into a digital currency that can travel instantly around the world, holding up against Bitcoin or any other token.

Cryptos are now worth $2.1 trillion, doubling in value this year alone. Bitcoin, worth nearly $900 billion, recently became legal tender in El Salvador—a controversial monetary shift in the country, but one that may pave a path for other developing nations. Capital is flooding into companies that are building everything from trading platforms to exchanges for trading new digital assets like non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Investors are also trading tokens on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, and they’re earning high yields by “staking” their tokens to network operators.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/coming-war-money-cryptos-51631845330?mod=hpsubnav

Currently, there are Helium hotspots deployed in 119 countries worldwide. Breaking down this network data, 25 countries around the world represent roughly 96% of the network. Although the US currently has the largest share of hotspots at around 54%, Helium cannot be labeled a local phenomenon. The remaining hotspots have been popping up all over North America, Europe, and Asia.

Digging into the network data further, Helium hotspots can be found in every US state and almost every major US city. The network growth correlates to the population of the state- the larger the population, the more hotspots are required. This is a sign of healthy network growth naturally distributing itself to states with larger areas to cover.

https://messari.io/article/helium-exponential-coverage

The foundation behind the Avalanche blockchain said it received a $230 million investment from a group led by Polychain and Three Arrows Capital, through the private sale of its surging AVAX cryptocurrency.

R/Crypto Fund, Dragonfly, CMS Holdings, Collab+Currency, Lvna Capital and a group of angel investors and family offices also participated in the investment, according to a statement. The Avalanche Foundation will use proceeds from the token sale — which was completed in June — to support and accelerate the rapid growth of decentralized finance or DeFi, enterprise applications, and other use cases on the Avalanche public blockchain.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/avalanche-raises-230-million-from-sale-of-surging-crypto-token?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_content=business&utm_medium=social&sref=PXN7mzI6

Attempts to transfer money of this value in traditional fiat markets would simply be futile. Anchored to anachronistic models, the financial ecosystem stands as a stark outlier to the instantaneous, largely inclusive modern information services experience.

An international fiat transfer often takes one to four working days to process and includes a hefty transaction fee of 1-3%. For a transaction worth $2 billion, this would come at the cost of between $20 – $60 million.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-worth-2-billion-moves-for-just-78-cents

Steven Cohen, the billionaire hedge fund manager and onetime crypto skeptic, has jumped into the NFT market in a move that could shake up sports marketing, as well as the Metaverse.

DIGITAL, a Metaverse investment venture backed by Cohen, has led a $50M Series A fundraising round in RECUR, a tech startup that develops “on-chain branded experiences” and enables customers to buy, collect, and resell NFTs. The deal bestows RECUR with a valuation of $333M, the company said in a statement released Monday. Cohen is joining RECUR’s board.

https://thedefiant.io/steven-cohen-point72-recur-nfts/

Sept 13 (Reuters) – Coinbase Global Inc (COIN.O) is planning to raise about $1.5 billion through a debt offering to invest in product development and potential mergers and acquisitions, the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange said on Monday.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/coinbase-looking-raise-15-billion-through-debt-offering-2021-09-13/?taid=613f8aa28673f2000160b5bd&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

MicroStrategy has purchased an additional 5,050 bitcoins for ~$242.9 million in cash at an average price of ~$48,099 per #bitcoin. As of 9/12/21 we hodl ~114,042 bitcoins acquired for ~$3.16 billion at an average price of ~$27,713 per bitcoin.

https://www.microstrategy.com/en/investor-relations/financial-documents/microstrategy-acquires-additional-5050-bitcoins_09-13-2021