👀 Hey Bitcoin ETF! Say Hello to the 500 DeFi Index Funds Already Trading
Hello Defiers! Here’s what we are covering today, News Layer 1s Better Watch Their Backs as L2s Surge in TVL Fantom Surges 90% in 30 Days to Hit All-Time High and Challenge Elite Layer 1s Opinion Hey Bitcoin ETF! Say Hello to the 500 DeFi Index Funds ...
Hello Defiers! Here’s what we are covering today,
News
- Layer 1s Better Watch Their Backs as L2s Surge in TVL
- Fantom Surges 90% in 30 Days to Hit All-Time High and Challenge Elite Layer 1s
Opinion
Video
Podcast
🎙Listen to this week’s podcast w/ Braintrust’s Adam Jackson:
Links
- Hindenburg Research Announces $1,000,000 Bounty For Details On Tether’s Backing: Hindenburg
- France tests crypto assets in series of government bond deals: The Financial Times
- ProShares Bitcoin Futures ETF ‘BITO’ Hauls In $570M of Assets in Stock-Market Debut: CoinDesk
- How to borrow and lend any token: Bankless
- A fake piece made its way to a verified collection on OpenSea: Art Blocks
- God Mode: Snoop Dogg
Most Read in The Defiant
- Fantom Deploys High-Speed PoS to Solve the ‘Blockchain Trilemma’
- Terra and Abracadabra Team Up to Challenge Centralized Stablecoins
- DeFi 2.0 Wave of New Projects Test Liquidity Mining Alternatives
We’re excited. We’re getting ready to launch The Defiant Terminal, a platform for investors and analysts to track all DeFi data in one place. Join the waitlist today to be notified as soon as it’s live. You’ll want to be the first to get your eyes on that alpha.
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🙌 Together with:
- Balancer, one of the leading DeFi automated market makers (AMM) for multiple tokens. Dive into their pools at this link.
- Kraken, consistently rated the best and most secure cryptocurrency exchange, which can get you from fiat to DeFi
- Aave, an open-source and non-custodial liquidity protocol where users can earn interest on deposits and borrow assets.
Layer 2s
🚀 Layer 1s Better Watch Their Backs as L2s Surge in TVL
NEWS Smart contract platforms — Terra, Solana and Avalanche, to name a few — had a summer to remember. Terra’s LUNA rocketed 421% between June 1 and Sept. 30 and its fellow Layer 1s (L1s) Avalanche and Solana also delivered triple-digit returns.
SPOTLIGHT Now Layer 2s (L2s), which make Ethereum transactions more affordable and faster by executing them off the Layer 1 mainnet, are showing signs of mounting a rally of their own. This may bring Ethereum back in the spotlight after Solana’s SOL, Terra’s LUNA and Avalanche’s AVAX hit all-time highs in September and October. ETH has yet to break its all-time high of $4,357, which it hit in May.
YIELD FARM Both Ethereum L2s and these L1s tout their low fees and quick transaction speeds as advantages, placing the two groups in direct competition. Total value locked across Ethereum L2s is at an all-time high of $3.80B as of Oct. 18, eclipsing last month’s previous all-time high of $3.59B. The previous high occurred at a time when ArbiNYAN, an upstart yield farm on Arbitrum, the leading L2 in terms of TVL, accounted for roughly one-third of the TVL across all L2 solutions.
Value on L2, According to l2beat.com
👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈
📈 Fantom Surges 90% in 30 Days to Hit All-Time High and Challenge Elite Layer 1s
NEW STAR There’s a new star in the Layer 1 firmament: Fantom. The smart contract platform’s token, FTM, set an all-time high of $2.48 on Oct. 19 before slipping to about $2.31 in early morning trading Eastern time, according to CoinGecko. With a $5.9B market cap, the token has almost doubled in the last 30 days.
TRILEMMA Fantom is deploying a high-speed Proof-of-Stake system to solve the “blockchain trilemma” of balancing scalability, security, and decentralization without compromising efficacy. (See Mason Marcabello’s exclusive primer in The Defiant for details).
MULTIPLIED Having multiplied 144x since Jan. 1, FTM has bested the likes of Solana and Avalanche, as well as Cardano, Polkadot, Polygon and other smart contract platforms.
Fantom’s FTM token has skyrocketed 90% in the last 30 days.
👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈
BTC ETF Op-Ed
👀 Hey Bitcoin ETF! Say Hello to the 500 DeFi Index Funds Already Trading
Camila Russo, the Defiant’s founder and chiefess, notes the long-anticipated moment with a contrarian view — DeFi is way beyond a BTC futures ETF.
CRYPTO’S FUTURE The first Bitcoin ETF starts trading today and that’s a big deal. Everyone from multi-billion dollar investment firms to Wall Street hedge funds to individual investors can now easily and relatively cheaply buy Bitcoin. From the position of a news organization (and individual) who is optimistic about crypto’s future it feels almost wrong to write anything but a celebratory post.
CONTRARIAN TAKE So yeah, a Bitcoin futures ETF is a milestone. It’s nice. But it’s also just so meh when you look at DeFi’s progress. In the last year, a picture of a new financial system is emerging, and a Bitcoin futures ETF just isn’t the game-changer everyone in the mainstream believes it may be.
HUNDREDS OF FUNDS U.S. regulators have taken almost a decade since the Winklevoss twins filed their application to list their $COIN ETF to finally approve the ProShares product. But in just the last 24 months, hundreds of different tokenized index funds have been created using open source tools like Uniswap, Balancer and Set Protocol. These products were created by users who didn’t have to ask for anyone’s permission to provide index-based exposure to traders and investors. Anyone can invest in these funds.
👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈
Sponsored Post
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The Tube
📺 Tutorial: Acala's liquid tokens - the great DeFi unlock
Links
🔗 Hindenburg Research Announces $1,000,000 Bounty For Details On Tether’s Backing: Hindenburg
Hindenburg Research, a forensic financial research firm, today announces it is launching the Hindenburg Tether Bounty Program (the “Program”) – a reward of up to $1,000,000 for information leading to previously undisclosed details about cryptocurrency “stablecoin” Tether’s backing.
🔗 France tests crypto assets in series of government bond deals: The Financial Times
France has used digital assets and blockchain technology in a series of bond transactions, marking one of the most significant trials to date of cryptocurrencies in a leading established market.
🔗 ProShares Bitcoin Futures ETF ‘BITO’ Hauls In $570M of Assets in Stock-Market Debut: CoinDesk
The first-ever exchange-traded fund (ETF) backed by bitcoin futures hauled in some $570 million of assets on its first day of trading, a sign of just how hungry investors remain for bets on the cryptocurrency as prices approach a record high.
🔗 How to borrow and lend any token: Bankless
Dear Bankless Nation, DeFi is great because it’s permissionless. Anyone, anywhere, at any time can create financial products and services.
Art Blocks @artblocks_io@BrettRichey So sorry this happened! It was an outlier on OpenSea's UI and they've verified it's the only instance of a fake piece in a verified collection. They also reached out to issue a full refund. But yes, everyone please be careful out there. https://t.co/hVVrYD1ILZ1:30 AM ∙ Oct 19, 202171Likes3Retweets
11:24 PM ∙ Oct 18, 202114,222Likes1,194Retweets
Most Read in The Defiant
- Fantom Deploys High-Speed PoS to Solve the ‘Blockchain Trilemma’While the ever expansive world of decentralized finance is improving on its traditional counterpart the web3 is not without its problems.
- Terra and Abracadabra Team Up to Challenge Centralized StablecoinsFor an industry that has decentralization in its very name, DeFi’s reliance on centralized stablecoins remains an Achilles’ heel, making it an easy target for overzealous regulators.
- DeFi 2.0 Wave of New Projects Test Liquidity Mining AlternativesThings aren’t getting easier for those struggling to stay current with the lightning quick DeFi space. Just when you think you’re up to speed with the latest token or protocol along comes something new. Brace yourselves because here comes DeFi 2.0. What that term actually means is still in flux.
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🧑💻 ✍️ Stories in The Defiant are written by Brady Dale, Owen Fernau, Bailey Reutzel, DeFiDad and yyctrader, and edited by Edward Robinson, Bailey Reutzel, and Camila Russo. Videos are produced by Robin Schmidt, Alp Gasimov and Daniel Flynn. Podcast is led by Camila, edited by Alp.
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 ($15/mo, $150/yr
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