🔥 Insane Money and a Hype-Drunk Market: Are NFTs the New ICOs?

Hello Defiers! Here’s what we are covering today…

News

• Insane Money and a Hype-Drunk Market: Are NFTs the New ICOs?
• Twitter Drops 140 Free NFTs on Rarible
• DeFi Rates are Sliding Closer to TradFi Yields

Research

• Compound Treasury is the First Step in a Symbiotic DeFi-FinTech Relationship

Opinion

• After the Gold Rush: What Are the Next Steps for NFTs?

and more ;)

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📉 DeFi Rates are Sliding Closer to TradFi Yields

TLDR DeFi’s borrowing and lending rates are trending downwards, opening questions of what will happen to open finance if yields converge with those of traditional finance.

THE NEWS Borrowing rates for USDC have declined to 2.5% and 3.1% on Compound and Aave, from over 15% three months ago, according to LoanScan. Lending rates have suffered similar compression, with yields on the stablecoin dropping to 1.2% and 1.6% on the respective lending protocols in that period.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

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🔥 Insane Money and a Hype-Drunk Market: Are NFTs the New ICOs?

SEVEN FIGURES “If you have seven figures in JPEGs…” Deeze doesn’t have to finish the thought as he scrolls through his gallery of NFTs. The 27-year-old collector doesn’t have his camera on, but his profile photo is an NFT avatar with a hoodie and 3D glasses blowing bubbles from a pipe. It’s an aesthetic he searches for across NFT projects.

MONEY Deeze tells me on Zoom that he’s a mid-level IT employee, whose day job is not all that demanding. During the pandemic, he used his free time on some light degening, making a good amount of money in crypto yield farming. And now he’s all in on NFTs, so much so that he can’t even remember all the shit he owns. One thing he is certain of ̶ they’re worth a lot. Like seven-digits a lot.

Custom NFT created for Deeze by @le_sh1n

“Like ICOs, 99% of these NFT projects will go away,” said cryptograffiti, a crypto artist that prefers Bitcoin but has created a number of Ethereum-based NFTs.

99.9% Yet, it wasn’t just the pseudo-Bitcoin Maxi who was skeptical. Even full-on NFT enthusiasts ̶ think Gmoney, Deeze, Aftab Hossain (aka: DC Investor), $WHALE ̶ estimate up to 99.99% of the space will fail. So virtually everything.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

🐤 Twitter Drops 140 Free NFTs on Rarible

TLDR Twitter is on Rarible. Yes, the gigantic social media platform. That Twitter. On June 30, the official Twitter account tweeted that it was giving away 140 free NFTs based on the platform’s aesthetic, brand and memes. These one-of-twenty edition NFTs included a furry Twitter bird, an overflowing bottle of blue Twitter vitamins, and a Twitter “reply guy” whose head is literally an egg (in reference to the dudes with Twitter’s default egg profile picture who “mansplain” in the comments).

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

💰 After the Gold Rush: What Are the Next Steps for NFTs?

`By Masha Prusso

Upshot: Contributing writer Masha Prusso unpacks the state of play in the volatile NFT market and finds some fascinating patterns signalling what happens next…

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) exploded into popular consciousness in the first half of 2021. In particular, the art world really began to take notice of this asset class, which allows for clear ownership of a unique virtual item.

Whether it was the digital artist Beeple selling his NFT piece for more than $60 million, Covid Alien Punk reaching $11.8m at auction, or the first ever Tweet selling for over $2m, the interest in the NFT space has been incredible across both the crypto-space, and the general public alike.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

⚙️ Compound Treasury is the First Step in a Symbiotic DeFi-FinTech Relationship

On-Chain Markets Update by Lucas Outumuro, IntoTheBlock

DeFi is gearing up for broader adoption. Currently most DeFi protocols are looking at layer 2 scaling solutions or a multi-chain approach to be able to make transactions more affordable and scalable. While this reduces new users’ barriers to entry in terms of cost, they still have to go through a steep learning curve to set up and be ready to use applications on layer 2. Having users skip this learning process altogether is a promising alternative to benefit both users and token holders.

👉READ THE FULL PIECE IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

🔗 Swarm Markets launches what it claims is the world’s first regulated DeFi platform: The Block

Swarm Markets has followed a long and winding road to launching a decentralized exchange under the supervision of BaFin, the German regulator. The platform is now finally going live with $15 million in pledged liquidity.

🔗 SoftBank invests $200 million in Brazilian crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin: The Block

The SoftBank Latin America Fund has invested $200 million in the parent company of Mercado Bitcoin, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the region.

✊ Head to THEDEFIANT.IO for more DeFi news 📰

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in this newsletter were written by Owen Fernau, Dan Kahan and yyctrader and edited by Edward Robinson, Bailey Reutzel and Camila Russo. Videos were produced by Robin Schmidt and Alp Gasimov. Podcast was led by Camila, edited by Alp.

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