$10 Million Transferred for 7 Cents, Cash for ETH in Serverless ATM, New Tool for DeFi Loans

Good morning defiers! Here’s what’s going on in decentralized finance:

• Whale sightings in DeFi with a $10 million transfer
• Serverless ATM lets users swap cash for ETH
• Smart Savings is a tool to get the best rate on Dai loans

$10 Million Transferred on Ethereum for 7 Cents

10 million USDC, or $10 million, were transferred between two Ethereum addresses yesterday, Etherscan shows. The transaction took seconds and cost 7 U.S. cents.

On Venmo, an instant transfers would have cost 1%, or $100,000, and if you wanted to do it for free, you would have had to wait three business days. Of course you wouldn’t have transferred that large an amount through Venmo – because it wouldn’t let you! Bank of America charges $30 for same-day transfers, but again, they wouldn’t have allowed a retail customer to send that amount of money.

A transfer this large wouldn’t usually be done by an individual. More likely it would be done by a business. Even so, just the cost for U.S. clearinghouse ACH to process the transaction ranges from 15 cents to 95 cents, and that’s for just one party.

The downside for the Ethereum transfer is that the user probably won’t have a recourse if he made a mistake or if it wasn’t actually him/her who did it. Still, it’s pretty clear. Banking without banks > banking with banks.

Swapping Cash for ETH at Serverless ATM

One of the most commonly cited roadblocks for onboarding new users into open finance is how hard it is to simply get them in the door. Getting from regular money (a.k.a “fiat”), to magic money (a.k.a crypto) takes too many steps.

Image source: TrueLevel’s Twitter

The ATM that Uniswap and TrueLevel built for an ETHBerlin demo could help ease that process. It seems pretty seamless: After downloading an Ethereum wallet, users enter their address into the ATM through QR code. They deposit cash, which is converted into XCHF stablecoin stored in the ATM, which is then converted to ETH by Uniswap.

This is especially useful for people who don’t have bank accounts and can’t access most fiat-to-crypto on-ramps.

Another Tool to Make Sure You’re Getting the Best DeFi Rate

DeFi Saver integrated Compound Finance, dYdX and Fulcrum in a single dashboard so that users can quickly move their loans to the protocol that’s offering the best rates. The move would only take one transaction, which cuts gas costs and time. The project only supports Dai for now.

With more of these services popping up, it’s becoming clear that rates should tend to converge pretty quickly in a more mature DeFi ecosystem, and that the difference will mainly be due to platform risk. That’s great for borrowers and lenders, not so good for arb traders.

Subscribe now