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. …

Bitcoin (BTC) has had a stellar 2020, but how are other top crypto assets faring? Let’s take a look at how some of the top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization performed this . Bitcoin First, Bitcoin has seen a massive gain since Jan. 1, as its price soared from $7,195 to as high as $28,422. Within 12 months, the price of Bitcoin rose by 290%, outperforming all major stock indices and most stocks, apart from a select few including Tesla (TSLA). The main catalysts behind Bitcoin’s rally have been the increase in institutional demand, favorable financial conditions as a result of …

New York has given the first authorization to a stablecoin backed by the Japanese yen to operate in the United States. Per a Tuesday announcement, the New York Department of Financial Services has granted Japanese firm GMO-Z.com a charter to handle U.S.-dollar and yen-backed stablecoins in New York. Given New York's status as a global center, the NYDFS is the most prominent state financial regulator in the United States — it is also one of the most aggressive. A pass to operate in New York often opens up the rest of the country. GMO's charter is as a limited liability …

While wild price action on Bitcoin and Ethereum have claimed the attention of most traders over the Christmas weekend, a select sect of crypto traders are following an experiment playing out in real-time that may have implications for the future of stablecoins: the fate of Dynamic Set Dollar. Dynamic Set Dollar and its DSD token is an algorithmic stablecoin project designed to — eventually — track the United States Dollar on a 1-1 ratio with DSD. During expansionary cycles, such as one that led DSD as high as $3 per token last week, users are rewarded with freshly-printed “rebased” tokens …

A group of leading U.S. financial regulators has released a new statement on stablecoins. One of the headlining topics of crypto regulation news this year, stablecoins were the main topic of a Dec. 23 statement the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, or PWG. The PWG includes representation from the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The group's stated opinions were hardly revolutionary, mostly saying that stablecoin issuers would need to abide by all the typical rules of the road in terms of financial law. The regulators say that stablecoins need …

The Russian government is anticipating more cryptocurrencies to be issued in the local market in 2021, according to a senior official. Anatoly Aksakov, a member of the Russian State Duma and a key representative of local crypto legislation efforts, said that the Duma’s Committee on Financial Markets expects Russian crypto issuance to surge after the adoption of the country’s new crypto law on Jan. 1, 2020. Passed in July 2020, the law “On Digital Financial Assets” provides legal status to crypto, but bans people from using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) as a payment tool. According to a Dec. 21 report …

Throughout 2020 a handful of new stablecoins launched and many analysts have suggested that stablecoin growth is the backbone of the crypto sector and partially responsible for the current Bitcoin rally. For many traders, stablecoins provide a safe place to shelter during volatile periods in Bitcoin and altcoins but there are other ways to interact with these fiat-pegged assets. Terra Protocol aims to create a programmable algorithmic stablecoin available on every blockchain. Similar to its better-known competitor, Maker (MKR), Terra Protocol has a native stabilizing crypto-asset called LUNA. The project was created by a partnership of 15 large Asia-based e-commerce …

Tether (USDT), the largest cryptocurrency stablecoin, has passed a $20 billion market cap for the first time. According to data confirmed by the company on Dec. 18, Tether is now a $20 billion asset and the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Tether market cap doubles since September "Tether has just surpassed a $20B market capitalization!" an official Twitter update reads. "This fantastic milestone is another confirmation for Tether maintaining its number one spot as the most liquid, stable and trusted currency!" Tether's market cap has been increasing at an almost record pace throughout the past quarter, passing $10 billion just …

United States-bases stablecoin operator Paxos has raised $142 million in fresh funding from investors including PayPal and Mithril Capital. The stablecoin issuer announced the news on Thursday. U.S. investment firm Declaration Partners, backed by billionaire David M. Rubenstein, led the funding round with other participants including RIT Capital Partners plc., Ken Moelis, Alua Capital, and Senator Investment Group. Previous Paxos backers like RFE Ventures and Liberty City Ventures also invested in the funding round. With the close of the $142 million Series C round, Paxos has now raised over $240 million from investors and backers. Commenting on the development, Paxos …

Cross-chain decentralized finance lending protocol Equilibrium is set to bring its U.S.-dollar-pegged stablecoin to Moonbeam, a Polkadot project building an Ethereum-like blockchain. DeFi projects building on Moonbeam will be able to use Equilibrium’s stablecoin as if it were native to the blockchain. This includes decentralized exchanges, single-purpose lending protocols and other DeFi building blocks. Moonbeam can be described as the “Ethereum on Polkadot” project. It uses the same smart contract environment seen in Ethereum, featuring an Ethereum Virtual Machine and using the same convention for accounts and wallets. As a consequence, Moonbeam supports Solidity smart contracts and allows developers and …

The first half of 2020 was pretty tumultous for Waves (WAVES), as the altcoin underperformed Ether (ETH) price by 36%. While it was once a top-20 cryptocurrency for a brief period back in Dec. 2018, the proof-of-stake project created by the Russian physicist Alexander Ivanov in 2016 seemed to have lost its traction. The platform's success was initially based on its mobile application designed to streamline the user experience of decentralized applications (dApps) usage. Waves blockchain combines on-chain governance with blockchain-based computing but unlike Ethereum, it offers fixed fees. This means there are no variable processing fees for miners and …

A number of popular U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins exist on the crypto market. Stablecoins based on the euro also exist, but are notably less liquid, according to Zahreddine Touag, co-founder and head of trading at Paris-based market making firm Woorton. “There’s not any euro stablecoin that is very liquid,” Touag said on Thursday during a Paris Blockchain Week conference panel, noting multiple points of rationale. The most impactful reason: “It’s very costly to do a euro stablecoin,” he noted, adding: “The primary source of revenue for U.S. dollar coins are the interest rates when you replace the U.S. dollar because you …