🦄 Recap: DeFi Week of March 22
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Hello Defiers! Hope you’re having a great weekend.
Summing up: The biggest news this week was Uniswap v3. DeFi’s most popular DEX announced details of how its third update will look like. One of the biggest highlights was concentrated liquidity, or the ability for liquidity providers to add capital to a specific range of prices rather than the entire curve. One of the implications of that is that LPs will get NFTs in exchange for their positions, instead of ERC20 tokens.
Speaking of NFTs, Beeple, the artist who sold one of these unique tokens at Christie’s for a record $69M, sparked debate when he cashed out all of the ETH he got from the sale. Mark Cuban-backed Nifty’s is one of the latest NFT projects to launch, with the goal of bringing social media to the space. Writer Clyde Smith explored how big corporations and celebrities are leveraging NFTs for marketing.
The week ended with a correction in the crypto market as a record amount of Bitcoin options expired Friday. IntoTheBlock looked at actual demand to use ETH and it remained intact during the slump, while ETH in long-time holders’ wallets continued to grow. Another controversy that sparked crypto Twitter this week was BitClout, a blockchain-based social media website. A pre-sale to VCs and the fact that the team uploaded the profiles of influencers onto the site without their permission overshadowed the launch.
We covered the new regulatory boogeyman for crypto in our Defiant Weekly video, and dove into how you can potentially earn a 20% fixed-rate on Anchor in our Tuesday Tutorial. Jim Bianco of Bianco Research, a firm that caters to traditional money managers, came on the podcast and explained why he’s convinced DeFi will quickly take over traditional finance –– and his clients better adapt or risk getting replaced.
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
Balancer, one of the leading DeFi automated market makers (AMM) for multiple tokens. Dive into their pools at https://balancer.finance/!
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
📺 Defiant Weekly: What are VASPs and should we be worried?
📺 Tuesday Tutorial: How to earn fixed interest (20%) on UST
📺 Quick Take: Uniswap version 3 announced
📺 Quick Take: 20% Fixed rated interest on Anchor!?
Interview
"I Try to Tell People About DeFi; It Will Come Here and Completely Flatten You:" Jim Bianco
Jim Bianco has decades of experience as a macro markets researcher. He's been leading his firm Bianco Research since 1990 and was at UBS and Lehman Brothers before that. It was after installing MetaMask, and doing some yield farming and NFT investing, that he realized, DeFi is a new financial system, and it will replace the old one. And the reason is simple: it’s just better. He has carefully brought this up to his clients, but it’s been tough. Those that don’t underestimate open finance, are waiting to retire before they have to catch up. But Bianco thinks DeFi is taking over sooner than they think.
🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:
Op-eds
"Marketers Should Know This About NFTs: Respect the Culture:" By Clyde F. Smith
As millions are flowing in to buy tokenized art, of course, corporations and celebrities will want to ride the hype. For some it will be conviction-driven, for others it will opportunistic. Just today, we’re seeing the latest installment, with Time magazine releasing three special edition NFT covers for auction. Mark Cuban and Elon Musk are notable examples of heavyweights testing the waters with non-fungible tokens. The following op-ed takes lessons from what influencers like Gary Vaynerchuk and big corporations like Taco Bell have so far got right — the key lays in respecting the culture.
The Betrayal of Cashing Out
After a New Yorker profile on Beeple revealed that the NFT-megastar converted $53M worth of ETH into USD from the sale of his record-breaking “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” some members of the crypto community seemed to feel betrayed. This is a space where people are tied to their bags, both financially and technologically. For most of the world, turf wars between maximalists of competing blockchains would be the stuff of dystopian cyberpunk fiction. For us, that’s just Tuesday. So certainly a person who makes their money on a specific platform with a specific cryptocurrency should be actively supporting that platform’s continual success, right?
Inbox Dump #1
We’re starting a new section: The Inbox Dump. This post will come out every Saturday and include the updates and announcements that flood my DMs each week and didn’t make it to our content platforms. Look at it as the starting point to DYOR. I will also include a compilation of crypto funding rounds in the past week so you have these in one handy place.
The Inbox Dump will be exclusive to Defiant subscribers. We sent this first one for all signups of the newsletter to give everyone a chance to see if it’s worth becoming a member. Members also get full transcripts of the podcast, early access to guest posts, and an invite to the subscribers-only Discord chat. I will be raising the subscription price to $15/month, from $10/month in a week.
Subscribe now to lock in the $10/month price and to never miss an Inbox Dump and other subscriber benefits!
Thursday
Markets
Record Bitcoin Options Expiring Weigh on Price: The highest amount of Bitcoin options ever is set to expire this Friday, which may put some temporary selling pressure on the largest cryptocurrency.
ETH Fundamentals Improve Despite Correction: Ethereum’s demand and store of value proposition continue to grow, unaffected by the recent price volatility, IntoTheBlock found.
Bytes
Nifty’s Wants to Bring Social Media to NFTs: The NFT boom has yet a new twist: social media. Nifty’s, which is led by NBA’s former SVP of new media Jeff Marsilio, is creating an NFT-focused social media platform. Members will be able to create, collect, and display all sorts of NFTs under one community.
Links
Wednesday
Dives
DeFi Has a First World Problem: Too Few EM Users: It’s become a consensus view that the use case for cryptocurrencies becomes stronger in emerging markets, which are more often plagued with authoritarian regimes and devaluing currencies than developed nations. If that’s the case, then DeFi builders aren’t reaching the audience that needs them most.
Bytes
Curve Finance Fork Ellipsis Launches on BSC: Ellipsis Finance, an authorized fork of Curve Finance, launched yesterday on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). The protocol is an exchange for stablecoins and its launch doc promises traders “very low slippage and minimal fees.”
Alpha Finance Lab Launching ALPHA Tokenomics: Alpha Finance Lab will be launching its ALPHA tokenomics system “in the coming days,” allowing token holders to earn fees from staking across all of ALPHA’s products.
Links
Tuesday
Dives
Uniswap V3 Drop Features L2 Move and 4,000x Gain in Capital Efficiency: Uniswap has mapped out what is perhaps the most anticipated DeFi product launch of the year with its post introducing its version three (V3) iteration.
BitClout Insiders-Only Pre-Launch Overshadows Social Media Revamp: BitClout wants to be the open-source, creator-centric rebuke to ad-driven social networks. But its password-protected pre-launch with influencers' profiles pre-populated on the site is overshadowing those lofty goals.
Float Attracts $1.3B of Assets Locked as Non-Pegged Stable Assets Gain Steam: Float Protocol has over $1B of cryptocurrency locked in its contracts after less than a day since the project’s phase two distribution event began.
💜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).