Following the explosive growth of decentralized finance in the second half of 2020, we’re asking ourselves what the next chapter will look like. What would it take for DeFi to expand beyond crypto-native assets and communities and start eating financial services as we know it? The second half of 2020 surpassed many of our expectations, and the market has only accelerated since then. Total value locked in DeFi rose from less than $1 billion at the start of June to $13 billion at the end of the year and over $27 billion since then. Catalyzed by Compound’s COMP token launch, …

When capital markets opened for the first time this year on Jan. 4, 2021, the focus of the front page of the Financial Times was squarely aimed at Bitcoin (BTC) with the headline: “Bitcoin tops $34,000 as record-breaking rally resumes.” That Bitcoin is seeing institutional buy-in on a level unsurpassed in its history is certain, but what does this mean for the wider crypto space? How do we move from institutional adoption of Bitcoin or other crypto assets to connecting traditional finance markets with the decentralized finance and digital asset markets? If we can achieve this lofty goal, the inflows …

Guggenheim CIO Scott Minerd’s apparent shift from bullish to bearish and back again on either side of an SEC filing pertaining to a half billion dollar investment in BTC has been raising eyebrows on social media. The observation was made after approximately $500 million in BTC was moved from Coinbase into a series of private wallets on Jan. 31, which corresponds with an amount and effective date in a SEC filing by Guggenheim Funds Trust. I looked in to the 14K $BTC transaction from earlier Split over 8 nicely mixed wallets, with some outputs going to a bunch of other …

Decentralized finance is a form of finance that does not require traditional intermediaries such as banks, brokerages or exchanges. All of the work that would normally be handled by these institutions is instead performed by technological solutions including smart contracts and blockchain. The legacy banking system and DeFi are markedly different. While traditional finance is slow to develop and adapt, in just a few years, companies operating in the DeFi sector have built a parallel financial system from the ground up. There are payment systems, lending protocols, exchanges and more. There is also a growing stablecoins market of fiat-pegged assets …

It would be fair to admit that after 2020 and all it has put us through, making any predictions for the upcoming year is most likely to be a game of blindfold. Meanwhile, I am certain that humanity has much to learn from its past transgressions, and will move forward by correcting our mistakes and weaknesses. That’s what we always do. Undoubtedly, the major driver of our development this year was the COVID-19 outbreak. The effects of the ongoing global pandemic on every aspect of our lives will form our future, and there are some tendencies we started last year …

The decentralized finance industry undoubtedly has vast potential — the value locked in it has exploded, surpassing $14 billion this month. Though there is speculation over whether decentralized finance is yet another bubble, I believe it is here to stay. How it stays, however, is another matter that depends on how DeFi handles ongoing hacks and other vulnerabilities, how centralized finance incorporates DeFi’s leading features and vice versa. DeFi encompasses everything that the crypto space fundamentally stands for: democracy, power to the unbanked and underbanked, transnationalism, a truly global and shared economy, all of which many would consider financial utopia. …

As Bitcoin’s (BTC) price continues to climb ever higher, more and more people are beginning to educate themselves on how they can enter the cryptocurrency market. However, the realities of cryptocurrency ownership (long complicated addresses, passphrases and security risks) all remain barriers to adoption for new users. Programmers and technologists generally assume a level of understanding and ability with tech innovations that the average person on the street simply is not equipped with. A survey carried out by our team saw 75% of respondents say they found cryptocurrency transactions stressful and unnecessarily complicated. A majority (55%) said they had had …

Figuring out the point at which decentralized finance began almost always ends up in a rhetorical debate. Some argue that Bitcoin’s (BTC) invention a decade ago marked the start of it, as the major cryptocurrency was the first peer-to-peer digital money and represents the conceptual core underpinning DeFi. Others say — and would be technically correct in doing so — that DeFi started back in December 2017, when Ethereum-based protocol MakerDAO was launched, followed by Compound Finance and Uniswap, released in September and November 2018, respectively. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that DeFi’s true …

The crypto space has come a long way since its inception in 2008. Many areas have improved over the last 12 years, such as custody and exchange solutions. If you ask the early adopters of crypto, they can tell you stories about how hard it was to set up a wallet or how cumbersome it was to go to a meetup and exchange Bitcoin (BTC) without being scammed. Since then, things have changed for the better when it comes to user experience and user interface. Nowadays, creating a cryptocurrency wallet is as easy as setting up an email address. The …

Goldman Sachs is reportedly one of several financial institutions to sign on to JPMorgan’s custom blockchain service — a sign that more broker-dealers were looking to take advantage of digital currencies for their repo operations. In an interview with Bloomberg, Scott Lucas, head of blockchain markets at JPMorgan, said the investment bank is already using blockchain to conduct billions of dollars worth of repurchase agreements. The bank utilizes JPM Coin, a dollar-backed stablecoin, to swap digitized U.S. Treasury bonds much more efficiently. As Bloomberg notes, JPMorgan conducted the first live trades internally utilizing its Onyx blockchain infrastructure. That was enough …

Facebook, it is reported, could launch its long-awaited digital currency as early as January 2021 in the form of a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin. Central banks and regulators have been galvanized into action since Facebook first announced its intentions by publishing a white paper in 2019. They are right to be concerned, as stablecoins — particularly ones such as the rebranded Diem that have the potential for massive network effects — bring new risks to consumers and savers as well as to the global financial system. Related: What Is Libra? Breaking Down Facebook’s New Digital Currency But they also have the …

As the COVID-19 outbreak wreaks havoc on the United States’ economy and abroad, investors grapple with a second economic downturn in just over a decade. While the 2008 financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic are very different, both events have produced market volatility and allowed for new technologies to emerge. The economic disruption wrought by the pandemic also highlights the importance of serving people who are currently outside the financial system, both in developing and developed economies. Today, there are 1.7 billion unbanked individuals worldwide, according to the World Bank. Related: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the crypto space? …