To the DeFi community,
This week, Claimable helped DeFi users claim more than $50,000 in tokens from various airdrops like Uniswap, 1inch, Badger, and Tornado Cash – bringing prosperity and a new group of grateful uses.
?? How many airdrops and POAP's do you have unclaimed?
?? Enter your public #Ethereum address on
??https://t.co/BignNvwKLy
??
?? Maybe you're a kingpin #DeFi user with over $33,000 ready to claim like this person! pic.twitter.com/LI8p0BsnO5
— DeFi Dawson (@DawsonBotsford) February 8, 2021
The Federal Reserve is taking a comprehensive look at DeFi protocols, sharing a detailed report on the industry ranging from basic crypto building blocks to the finer points of building and using decentralized exchanges like Uniswap or generating crypto-collateralized loans via services like MakerDAO.
Read new research to find out what decentralized finance is and how it may lead to a paradigm shift in the financial industry #DeFi https://t.co/a9WY40xbEa pic.twitter.com/9eZZMVe0cf
— St. Louis Fed (@stlouisfed) February 8, 2021
Two of the biggest narratives of 2020 finally collided this week to the tune of a $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin by Tesla, as Elon seems to be falling deeper and deeper into the crypto rabbit hole.
Any crypto wallet that won’t give you your private keys should be avoided at all costs
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2021
Keep in mind, a good chunk of Elon’s original wealth came from helping build PayPal, arguably one of the most successful electronic payment companies ever created, so he knows his stuff when it comes to digital money. Doge and Bitcoin today, Ethereum and DeFi tomorrow.
Doge appears to be inflationary, but is not meaningfully so (fixed # of coins per unit time), whereas BTC is arguably deflationary to a fault.
Transaction speed of Doge should ideally be a few orders of magnitude faster.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2021
Speaking of digital pioneers, Mark Cuban is also getting in on the new financial wave, and he seems very bullish about both digital gold and its place in the DeFi universe.
What I said was that btc is not a currency. It’s a store of value. Like gold. But when it came to utility Bananas had more utility. I can eat bananas ??. That was pre de-fi. DeFi and many other dapps changed everything. Now Btc is more than a SOV because of its swap utility
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) February 9, 2021
Now that just about anyone who knows Tesla knows about Bitcoin, it might be getting a little late to tell friends, family, and Telegram groups that ‘it’s still so early’ in the arc of the original cryptocurrency. DeFi, on the other hand, is just starting to come into its own, and is generating heaps more value than Bitcoin or even Ethereum did in their early years.
So keep your eyes peeled for product-market fit, dev teams that ship like it’s going out of style, and try not to let mind-numbing paper gains distract you from the potential for the best DeFi protocols to keep climbing higher. This is a financial revolution, and we are still early indeed.
DAI
Highest Yields: dYdX at 38.28% APY, Fulcrum at 15.05% APY
Cheapest Loans: CoinList at 3.00% APY, Aave at 7.79% APY
MakerDAO Updates
DAI Savings Rate: 0.00%
Base Fee: 0.00%
ETH Stability Fee: 2.50%
USDC Stability Fee: 0.00%
WBTC Stability Fee: 4.50%
USDC
Highest Yields: dYdX at 33.68% APY, Fulcrum at 14.07% APY
Cheapest Loans: CoinList at 1% APY, Aave at 7.8% APY
St.Louis Federal Bank Talks DeFi
The St. Louis FED reads up on DeFi with an in depth look at the inner workings of the ongoing financial revolution.
Claimable Helps Ethereans Claim Forgotten Airdrops
Claimable spreads joy by uncovering free money (and governing power) you didn’t even know you had.
PoolTogether Introduces Prize Pool Builder
PoolTogether lets users customize their own no-loss lotteries for fun and profit.
Armor.Fi New Liquidity Incentives and Institutional Partner
Armor adds new liquidity incentives to help spread pay-as-you-go coverage.
UMA Introduces KPI Options
UMA debuts new synthetic tokens to further align protocol and loyal users.
Stat Box
Total Value Locked: $41.06B (up 16.09% since last week)
DeFi Market Cap: $82.97B (up 24.37%)
DEX Weekly Volume: $14.49B (up 7.01%)
DAI Supply: 2.04B (up 12.64%)
Total DeFi Users: 1,386,000 (up 2.29%)
Bonus Reads
[Brian Flynn – Bankless] Your Wallet is Your Resume
[Cooper Turley – The Defiant] – Tornado Cash Rewards Security Focused Power Users
[Cami Russo – The Defiant] – Elon Musk Spooks ETH Futures Bears
[Chris Powers – Dose of DeFi] – On-chain capital pools
[Anthony Sassano – The Daily Gwei] – Pioneers – The Daily Gwei #180
[Owen Fernau – The Defiant] – MetaMask Raking in ~$170k/Day Shows DeFi Wallets Work as Businesses
[Anthony Sassano – The Daily Gwei] – Being Early – The Daily Gwei #182
Alex is an analyst and writer with experience at tech startups and Fortune 500 corporations. He’s focused on cutting-edge technologies in blockchain, energy, supply chains, transportation, urban living, and more and has been in the crypto community since 2014.
