🦄 Recap: DeFi Week of Feb. 8
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Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend.
Summing up: What a week! It started out with Tesla saying it bought $1.5B in Bitcoin, the day after ETH CME futures launched, and any concern about institutional bears driving down the prize evaporated, with Ethereum’s cryptocurrency breaking through $1,700 and $1,800. The St. Louis Fed issued a report saying that DeFi is likely the future of finance. Mastercard said it was adding crypto to its network, BNY and JPM said it would add crypto too. There was another big name making waves, and it was The Defiant who broke it —Mark Cuban said on the podcast that he’s a major ETH bull and DeFi power user.
Male artists are mining “thirst trap” NFTs in support of blockchain advocate CryptoFinally, spurring debate over sexism and what ownership of an individual’s digital image means. We also covered how Aave may be getting overheated after an impressive surge, and that MetaMask is making bank, proving decentralized wallets and DEXs can be profitable businesses. There’s a rising number of DeFi indexes, giving investors a chance to get diversified exposure to the space, as we covered on our Defiant Weekly video.
And there was more! There’s a lot going on, but we’ve got you covered :)
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🙌 Together with:
Zerion, a simple interface to access and use decentralized finance
Ledger, a hardware wallet combined with the Ledger application to securely buy, sell, exchange, stake, lend & manage your crypto
Kraken, consistently rated the best and most secure cryptocurrency exchange, which can get you from fiat to DeFi
Casper, an enterprise-focused blockchain which aims to introduce unprecedented security, speed and scale for businesses
Video
The Defiant Weekly
The Defiant guide to DeFi Indexes - Be Like Buffett
Tuesday Tutorials
Up to 9x Leverage Yield Farming with Alpha Homora V2
Monday Quick Take
A Look at NFTX
Interview
Mark Cuban: "ETH Has an Advantage Over BTC as a Store of Value"
In this week’s episode, we speak with Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks owner, billionaire investor and Shark Tank star. It’s been hard to pin down if Cuban is a crypto skeptic or believer. He has questioned the value of bitcoin and called its price surges a bubble, but he has also accepted crypto payments for his basketball team, and tweeted about using Aave and selling NFTs. You’ll have no doubt after listening to this interview where he stands: Cuban is a crypto bull, but more specifically a DeFi and Ethereum bull.
🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:
Thursday
Markets
AAVE May Be Getting Overheated: Aave continues to surpass expectations from an investment standpoint and in terms of progress in the underlying protocol, but on-chain data shows holders may be preparing to take profits.
Dives
MetaMask Revenue Proves DeFi Wallets Can be Profitable: MetaMask is making about $170k per day thanks to its token swap feature, Tom Schmidt of Dragonfly Capital said in a tweet, which was later confirmed with data the wallet’s team published in a Dune Analytics dashboard.
NBA Top Shots’ $50M in Sales Beats NFT Heavy Weights: The whole NFT digital collectible market has been exploding lately, but NBA Top Shot is in a league of its own, overtaking the space’s heavyweights.
Equilibrium Creating Version of Curve on Polkadot: Equilibrium, an interoperable money market, announced on a Feb. 9 Medium post plans to create a version of Curve Finance’s automated market maker on the project’s chain within the Polkadot ecosystem.
Bytes
Mastercard Plans to Bring Crypto Into its Network: Mastercard will start directly supporting select cryptocurrencies, the world’s second-largest payment network announced on its website yesterday.
Links
Wednesday
Dives
Yearn is Recovering: Yearn Finance, the yield aggregator protocol which suffered the first major hack of 2021 last week, has restored its yDAI vault and returned $9.7M in DAI funds to users who were affected by the attack.
Yearn Hack Sparks $1.7M Insurance Claim Controversy: Last week’s Yearn Finance hack has a DeFi user wrestling with insurance protocol ArmorFi over a $1.7M claim.
Bytes
Spartan Group Launches New DeFi Venture Fund: The Spartan Group has announced the launch of its $50M Spartan DeFi Venture Fund. The group has raised $30M of their targeted $50M. Investors include bankers and finance industry veterans who want to see DeFi succeed as the future of finance.
AirSwap Enables Token-Based Governance: Ethereum applications incubator ConsenSys has completed the transition to Phase II of their decentralized peer-to-peer trading system, AirSwap, enabling token-based governance.
Links
Twitter CFO Says Social Media Giant Weighs Adding BTC: The Block
Celo Raises $20M for Decentralized Venmo Competitor: Decrypt
Tuesday
Dives
Men of Crypto Attempt to Master the Art of the Thirst Trap: Middle-aged, male NFT artists like Second Realm and Alotta Money are posting scantily-clad photos of themselves to illustrate the sexist double-standard sometimes present in media: When a woman takes a picture, it’s a “thirst trap,” when a man does it, it’s a joke.
Bytes
Fed of St. Louis Says DeFi Released Wave of Innovation: DeFi is getting an unexpected and huge new backer: The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Tornado Cash Rewards Power Users: Tornado Cash passed its first governance proposal to make its native token - TORN - transferable yesterday afternoon.
Axie Infinity Digital Land Sold for Record $1.5M: The Tamagotchi x Pokemon web3 crossover Axie Infinity has broken the record for the largest NFT sale yesterday afternoon as a community member purchased a digital plot of land for 888.25 ETH, worth over $1.5M at the time of writing.
Links
Monday
Markets
ETH Futures Fears Fade After Tesla Adds $1.5B of BTC: Ether futures are now available on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the world’s largest derivatives exchange by volume, for the first time ever.
Bytes
You Can Now Earn Liquidity Provider Fees With Hashmasks: Hashmasks, the latest craze in the NFT market, aren’t just about looking cool. Now, collectors can use their Hashmasks to provide liquidity on exchanges like Sushiswap.
Grayscale Says ETH is Money, Commodity, and Interest-Bearing Asset: Digital currency asset manager Grayscale, breaks down three lenses through which to value Ethereum’s cryptocurrency Ether; money, commodity and interest bearing asset, in its first Ethereum-specific report.
Links
Tesla Trails Only MicroStrategy in Treasury Bitcoin Allocation: Bloomberg
At Least 6% of All BTC is in Corporate Treasuries: Bill Barhydt
💜Community Love💜
Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!
The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Sign up to learn more and keep up on the latest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($10/mo, $100/yr).