The decentralized finance space has grown exponentially over the last few months, to the point where more than $9 billion worth of crypto assets were locked in its protocols before crypto prices started dropping. The space had a little over $500 million locked in back in September 2019. This exponential growth in the last few months appears to be mainly related to a yield farming trend that started when lending protocol Compound began distributing its COMP governance token to users who interacted with the protocol. Put simply, yield farming —…
Day: September 13, 2020
New technology changes the game
Economists, pundits, institutions and investors often talk about the global financial system. When stocks go up and trade thrives, they applaud its contributions to prosperity; when the markets crash and stocks dip, they blame its inhuman scale or its untrustworthy manipulators. But anyone who has attempted to diversify their portfolio with foreign stocks or acquire another nation’s bonds quickly comes to the same conclusion: The global financial system isn’t a single entity. “The system,” singular, is really “The systems,” plural. How do the pieces of the global financial system interact?…
How on-chain KYC can breathe new life into enterprise blockchain
Of all the developments in blockchain technology over recent years, enterprise adoption has perhaps been the most anticlimactic. As the initial coin offering bubble started to inflate during 2017, blockchain entrepreneurs and commentators alike were hyping the technology as a solution for almost every industry and business problem in existence. Fast-forward to 2020, and progress in enterprise blockchain has been lethargic at best. Almost without exception, notable implementations of enterprise “blockchain,” such as IBM’s Food Trust or Maersk-led Trade-ins, have used distributed permissioned ledgers. Proponents of blockchain technology point to…
What centralization does to businesses
The failures of centralization in protecting individual and business data have been highlighted repeatedly over the past few years. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Sony and many more have all faced large-scale data hacks that have exposed the private information (and more) of their customers. The problem is not just data theft — banks, financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges have all suffered at the hands of malicious actors. Yet, huge amounts of information about our lives and livelihoods are still entrusted to centralized organizations, simply because that has always been the…
The latest on crypto regulation in Asia
When most people hear about buying Bitcoin (BTC) or other cryptocurrencies, they immediately think of the largest exchanges, most of which are located in Asia. Today, countries such as China and South Korea have become epicenters of blockchain innovation. However, in many countries, it’s still unclear whether cryptocurrencies are allowed, and if they are, what their status is. So, here’s how the regulation of the cryptocurrency market in Asia is shaping up and what should be expected from governments in the near future. China goes digital with the yuan Today,…