Finance Redefined is Cointelegraph's DeFi-centric newsletter, delivered to subscribers every Wednesday. Today the crypto world is celebrating Bitcoin’s new all-time high. We did it guys! We’re back to $20,000 after three grueling years. So for this reason, this will be a bit of a Bitcoin-themed newsletter. How is Bitcoin related to DeFi, you ask? Well, for one thing, DeFi’s total value locked has a delta of about 0.2 to Bitcoin’s price. This means that for each 1% that BTC price goes higher or lower, DeFi TVL changes by 0.2%. Most of that relationship is due to the peculiar accounting choice …

Sovryn, a decentralized finance platform operating on the RSK Bitcoin sidechain, announced on Tuesday its public launch. Users can now access a full suite for trading Bitcoin (BTC) in a trustless, noncustodial environment, benefiting from powerful leverage and yield opportunities. The platform presents a mix of major DeFi building blocks, including a collateralized lending protocol and automated market maker exchange. Users can trade long or short with up to five-times leverage, while holders of Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT) and the Dollar on Chain (DOC) stablecoin can earn interest by lending their assets. Later in December, the project plans to launch …

Bitcoin sidechain RSK launched a new bridge protocol called Powpeg, which will facilitate a trustless connection between Bitcoin (BTC) and RSK’s wrapped version of it, called Smart Bitcoin (RBTC). The system marks the first time that a Bitcoin sidechain has featured a trustless peg where the funds allocated to the chain are not controlled by a group of well-defined entities, often called a federation. Powpeg achieves this by combining the security features of a Hardware Security Module, or HSM, with RSK’s consensus layer based on merge-mining with Bitcoin. Sergio Lerner, co-founder of RSK, explained the concept to Cointelegraph: “In the …

DeFi protocol Money on Chain, a lending platform and stablecoin issuer based on Bitcoin (BTC) sidechain RSK, announced Wednesday the launch of TEX, an automated token swap platform based on an order book — with a unique twist. Instead of being available instantaneously, orders are processed in batches according to a slightly variable interval of a few minutes. Each execution, called a tick, matches the orders submitted to the blockchain. Each trade occurring in a given tick is performed at the same average price between all orders submitted by traders. Limit orders submitted by users indicate the maximum or minimum …

The team behind RSK, a smart-contract-enabled sidechain extension for Bitcoin, announced Tuesday that Maker’s Dai stablecoin is now available on the platform. The integration makes it possible to transfer Dai from Ethereum to the RSK sidechain, which makes it available for use in its Bitcoin-backed decentralized finance ecosystem. The solution uses the Ethereum token bridge developed by the RSK Infrastructure Framework, or RIF, team. The bridge locks up these tokens on the Ethereum blockchain and mints an equivalent amount on RSK, ensuring a stable and decentralized peg via smart contracts. The Dai integration has been audited by Trail of Bits …

A new enterprise initiative launched by IOVLabs, the company behind the RSK Bitcoin sidechain, seeks to simplify blockchain development for governments and enterprises. The joint venture, called Extrimian, was established with Argentinian software provider Grupo Sabra to create the RSK Enterprise Cloud platform. The blockchain-as-a-service platform is designed to allow governments and businesses to develop decentralized solutions and set up permissioned networks with ease. The platform is said to help integrate blockchain DApps into existing infrastructure used by enterprise and government entities. Guillermo Villanueva, the CEO of Extrimian and co-founder of Grupo Sabra, told Cointelegraph that the focus of the …

Bitcoin (BTC) sidechain RSK will soon be equipped with Chainlink (LINK) oracles, enabling developers on the smart contract-enabled blockchain to tap into market price feeds and other off-chain data to build their applications. The integration is being developed by IOVLabs, the company behind the RSK sidechain. It is currently live on testnet and expected to be launched on mainnet in less than a month, an IOVLabs spokesman said. Chainlink data will be ported to RSK via RIF Gateways, an interoperability framework that is designed to let developers access a broad array of data from other blockchains and the external world. …

Energy and transportation startup EVShare is launching a community energy-sharing pilot in Los Angeles. The initiative, which received $20 million in partner funding and a $9 million grant from the California Energy Commission, is set to test the application of blockchain technology in managing a localized renewable energy grid. The system relies on connecting local solar energy systems with electricity-based transportation to create an organic energy market. The goal is to connect 50 households to a localized grid used to provide energy for a pool of shared electric vans. A blockchain system based on the RSK Bitcoin sidechain and the …

IOV Labs, a startup that constructs financial solutions based on Bitcoin's blockchain, has introduced another layer of scaling. "IOV Labs announced the launch of its Light Client for the Lumino Payments Network, a third-layer Bitcoin scaling solution," said a statement provided to Cointelegraph, which added: Lumino Payments Network enables off-chain payment capabilities for any current or future ERC20-compliant token deployed on the RSK and RIF blockchain networks." Bitcoin-based decentralized finance Ethereum made a name for itself as a smart contract-enabled network primed for project building. Thanks to a sidechain solution called Rootstock (RSK), however, projects can work with smart contracts …

A startup has launched a leveraged token and a decentralized stablecoin based on Bitcoin (BTC)-powered RSK and its second layer solution Infrastructure Framework layer (RIF). According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph on April 21, Bitcoin-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol MoneyOnChain launched the new products on RSK’s sidechain. A DAI competitor on Bitcoin’s blockchain The new DeFi platform, dubbed RIF on Chain will feature RIF Dollar (RDOC), RIFX and RIFpro (RPRO). RPRO is a token that mirrors the price of RIF but also grants passive income by collecting a share of the fees generated by platform transactions. RDOC is pegged …

Bitcoin (BTC) turned 10 years old recently, and if someone were to tell its founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, in 2008 that the new decentralized currency would still be thriving in 2019, he/she/they may assume that the experiment succeeded. However, an idea like Bitcoin is capable of existing even if it isn’t very effective at delivering on its promises, and it just so happens that a decade later, everyone is still knocking their heads against the very first criticism made in response to its white paper. After Satoshi published Bitcoin’s white paper in 2008, the first person to comment on it publicly …

Bitcoin-based smart contract protocol Rootstock (RSK) is integrating with spin-off project RIF OS to expand its scope of operations, the parties confirmed in two separate blog posts Nov. 18. As part of the deal, RIF Labs, the structure behind off-chain infrastructure layer RIF OS, will acquire RSK’s counterpart RSK Labs. RIF started out as a side project from the same executives who held senior positions at RSK. Together, they plan to enable the RSK protocol to go beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum network support and include various P2P functions. “The three principal components to the RIF OS announcement include the integration …