Tag Archive for: DeFi

Tulip Trading and its potentially stunting effect on the blockchain

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Written by James Ramsden KC, Kings Counsel of the Astraea Group

The Court of Appeal's ruling on Friday, February 3, in Tulip Trading's lawsuit against sixteen promoters who allegedly control the Bitcoin network is a major step forward for the industry.

Legally, the error is very nuanced; it merely states that Tulip's allegation that the promoters owe it fiduciary and diligence duties constitutes “a serious issue that must be tried” and therefore must go to trial. But this underestimates its practical importance.

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CeFi Vs Defi: Which is better? Should they work together?

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CeFi Vs DeFi: Do They Need Each Other?

Article taken from BeInCrypto


Decentralized finance is one of the hottest topics right now, not only in the realm of cryptocurrencies, but also in finance in general, widely regarded as the next frontier of the global economy. Blockchain technology changes the way we interact with the financial world and has the power, if implemented correctly, to break down institutional and bureaucratic barriers.

However, looking at things from a practical perspective, DeFi cannot do everything by itself or in isolation from existing financial infrastructures. For example, it is quite a challenge to successfully establish a solution that allows people to buy crypto through a bank card and use that crypto to interact with the DeFi sector, without going through a centralized institution (CeFi). Both DeFi and CeFi have their advantages and disadvantages, and today there is a growing desire to connect both worlds to facilitate access to their respective services.

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Polygon claims to have achieved carbon neutrality

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Article taken from Be(in)Crypto

Polygon proclaims itself as a green company: In collaboration with Klima DAO, the Polygon ecosystem has withdrawn $400.000 in carbon credits to offset greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: Unsplash

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WhatsApp to offer digital payments: Will Facebook finally get away with it?

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WhatsApp was created in 2011 and in February 2014 was acquired by Facebook for $19.000 billion in what was Facebook's largest purchase to date, and remains one of the largest tech acquisitions in the world. history WhatsApp is the most popular messaging service in over 100 jurisdictions and has over 2.500 billion active users, having been downloaded over 5.000 billion times. 

In June 2018, Facebook shook up bankers, including central bankers and governments, when it announced it was forming a partnership (which included organizations such as Visa, Mastercard and Paypal) to launch a digital currency. Given that Facebook has 2.800 billion monthly active users, we can say that three times more users than all the citizens of the G7 economies combined. Governments and bankers feared that Pound of Facebook (now renamed as diem) could even replace their national currencies. So it's no surprise that WhatsApp wants to leverage its global distribution and start enabling digital payments using its huge customer base. 

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How will DeFi enable participants to reimagine financial markets?

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Written by Estafa Lehes, co-founder of Swarm Markets, a regulated DeFi wallet

Financial infrastructure affects every aspect of our lives, from paying for a coffee to buying a house, so it plays a critical role in economic development and stability. In recent years, FinTechs have emerged to improve the user experience of institutions and offer additional services through an API. They have tried to democratize access to global markets by making them more transparent and giving some level of control to the user. We have seen this happen in other sectors where new technology improves the user experience. For example, in the travel industry, Booking.com removed an entire layer of middlemen and gave people direct access to book hotels, flights and even day trips. The advent of decentralized finance (DeFi), made possible by blockchain technology, takes the user experience in financial markets one step further. By digitizing financial markets, the people who use and participate in them are able to reimagine how they are built. Putting users at the center of the design of financial markets, rather than centers, will encourage the creation of new products based on the unique trading needs of individuals and institutions.

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Crypto asset insurance: DeFi vs. CeFi

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Written by Ben Davis Head of Superscript's international portfolio and emerging technology practice.

The traditional centralized insurance industry has historically been slow to act when new innovations appear. There are several reasons for this, but the main one centers on the fact that insurers need to think about future liability for past writings. What does this mean? It means insurers have to try to predict where they might have a claim for the companies they currently insure. With new and emerging technologies, this is difficult to do. For example, if you talk to any property or casualty insurer, you can show them their actuarial models that illustrate why they charge a certain rate for a certain risk. These models have been generated from years and years of claims data; with each claim, the market adjusts its rates and, more importantly, its predictions for future claims. In essence, if you reduce an insurance company, it is a data company that uses its data to make bets. Data and bets. Welcome to traditional insurance. 

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DeFi platforms increase pressure on banks: How will regulators respond?

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Decentralized finance (DeFi) has certainly captured the attention of our readers, who are wondering if DeFi is “just another fad, or if it really offers a real innovation in how some of the financial markets work”.

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Decentralized Identity: Is Blockchain Necessary?

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Article written by Steve Pannifer, Consult Hyperion, a consulting firm focused on payment and identity solutions, which has worked with major banks and payment platforms. 

Digital identity: a problem that needs a solution

Digital identity remains one of the main unsolved problems in the digital world. Today, every organization you interact with tends to create its own version of its identity. To do this, they collect information about you and compare it with background sources, whenever possible. The information that is collected, and how it is checked, varies from one organization to another. This results in an inconsistent and unpredictable user experience. No wonder conversion rates for financial services products, where identity checks must be thorough, are so low. According to the Signicat survey "Battle to Onboard", 63% of consumers abandoned a digital banking app in 2020.

The way we currently manage identity also creates other problems: the massive replication of personal data across all the services we use creates privacy and fraud risks. If an organization that has your data is hacked, that data can be used to compromise your accounts elsewhere or to fraudulently create a new account in your name. The fines introduced by the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) force companies to better protect customer data, but the way we do things hasn't fundamentally changed.

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The Great Awakening The transition from medium of exchange to direct exchange

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Written by David Parsons founder of TrustMe Property Exchange

With the advent of blockchain technology and digital assets, trust in the execution of business transactions is approaching the level of security of direct exchange with known parties. This level of trust in commercial transactions has existed since the dawn of trade between peoples. We will examine the benefits of direct exchange in the past and how blockchain technology and digital assets are enabling the same level of trust we had in the past.

Example of long-term personal credit

Font: Wikipedia – barter for chickens

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DeFi: Fast and Furious funding

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Written by DOctora Jane Thomason, Author of Blockchain Changing the world

The year 2020 was marked by a boom in decentralized finance (DeFi), the total value locked in DeFi contracts increased 40x to $83.000 billion at the end of December 2020, $600 million in January 2020 and continued to increase as shown in the figure below.  

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