🇰🇷Bitcoin's "Kimchi Premium" Just Blew Up Again

Hello Defiers! Here’s what we’re covering today,

• Bitcoin’s “Kimchi premium” signals rising demand for the cryptocurrency in South Korea —and the same is happening with ETH and DeFi tokens
• Single whale moves the needle on Compound TVL
• C.R.E.A.M. Finance introduces cross-protocol flash loans
• NEAR Rainbow Bridge to Ethereum is live
• dYdX launches Layer 2 perpetuals powered by StarkWare
• New DeFi 101: DeFi Aggregators

and more :)

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• Zerion, a simple interface to access and use decentralized finance
• Balancer, one of the leading DeFi automated market makers (AMM) for multiple tokens. Dive into their pools at https://balancer.finance/!
• 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.

📺 Quick Take: What Happened in the FEI Protocol Genesis Event

📺 Tuesday Tutorials: Create DeFi Combinations with Furucombo

First Look: iNFT & Chat with Darth Vader

🇰🇷 Bitcoin’s “Kimchi Premium” Blows Up

TLDR The so-called “Kimchi Premium,” the difference between Bitcoin’s price on South Korean exchanges versus the international price spiked to 23% before dropping to roughly 14% at the time of writing. This meant that BTC traded for almost $70K on Apr. 5 in South Korea, while the price was around $58K internationally.

CRACKING THE ARB The knife-like drop to a 14% premium, which is still historically high, is likely due to a party finally cracking the arbitrage code. Bithumb, one of South Korea’s largest exchanges, saw massive inflows to its Bitcoin wallets relative to average inflows in the past few days. It’s likely arbitrageurs purchased BTC and then sent it to Bithumb to be sold at the premium.

CAPITAL CONTROLS The premium comes from South Korean retail demand for Bitcoin combined with the country’s closed off exchanges and strict capital controls which make it difficult for South Koreans to exchange their currency for another.

BEYOND BITCOIN The South Korean premium on crypto assets extends beyond Bitcoin. ETH, UNI, and others show similar spikes, suggesting the South Koreans are not favoring one cryptocurrency in particular, but the sector as a whole.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

💰 Compound Assets Locked Jump After Single Whale Deposits 629k ETH

TLDR Compound has been ahead of other DeFi protocols, with over $ 10 billion supplied since March. when users take out a loan. The recent rise in Compound’s deposits comes after a whale deposited over 629,000 Ether in a single transaction.

JUSTIN SUN The address has since been linked with Justin Sun and his deposit is expected to be earning him roughly $80,000 worth of COMP per day. The $1.2 billion invested by Justin Sun in the pool brought the total to over $5 billion.

As of April 7, 2021 using IntoTheBlock’s Compound Protocol insights

LOWER BORROWING COSTS Recall that borrow and lending rates are updated dynamically in protocols such as Compound based on demand and supply. In this case, the high influx of supply resulted in reduced earnings for other depositors, but also lower borrowing rates for Ether. Total amount of ETH borrowed quickly spiked as a result, but has since dropped.

TOTAL BORROWED Total amount borrowed from Compound has been growing steadily, reaching over $6 billion compared to Maker’s $3 billion and Aave’s $600 million. While the COMP rewards are certainly a factor in the growth in Compound loans, it is worth noting that borrowing rates for Maker have on average been lower even after accounting for farming earnings.

As of April 7, 2021 using IntoTheBlock’s lending insights

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

🍧 C.R.E.A.M. Finance Unveils Cross-Protocol Flash Loans

TLDR DeFi lending protocol C.R.E.A.M. Finance is launching a protocol-to-protocol flash loan product through its Iron Bank, with the aim to increase capital efficiency and expand the scope of decentralized finance.

“More assets than ever are now available for flash loans, and at cheaper rates than before,” Leo Cheng, Co-Founder and Project Lead at C.R.E.A.M. Finance, said in an interview.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

🌉 Bridge Connecting NEAR Blockchain to Ethereum is Live

TLDR The Rainbow Bridge, which connects the NEAR blockchain to Ethereum, is live. The Rainbow Bridge is a decentralized, permissionless bridge protocol built by NEAR Protocol that allows anyone to use an existing bridge or deploy a new bridge. With the Rainbow Bridge, users will now be able to move any ERC-20 token back and forth between NEAR and Ethereum.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

⚖️ dYdX Launches Layer 2 Perpetuals Powered by StarkWare

TLDR dYdX launched its cross-margined perpetuals product on a Layer 2 scaling solution powered by blockchain software developer StarkWare.

VOLUME StarkWare co-founder and CEO Uri Kolodny said that within 24 hours, dYdX’s layer 2 Perpetuals protocol exceeded $10M in trading volume. During dYdX’s closed alpha period, which launched in February, the protocol moved $90M in trading volume across 25k trades.

👉 READ THE FULL STORY HERE, IN THEDEFIANT.IO 👈

🔗 Announcing Audius Collectibles: Audius

“Audius Collectives brings all of your NFTs from disparate wallets and marketplaces directly to your fans where they listen. This is a great way to personalize your profile or give your most loyal listeners exclusive drops on limited edition sales, concerts, albums, tickets, digital art, and more. Starting today, artists with Silver Tier accounts—i.e., those holding more than 100 $AUDIO—now have instant access to Collectibles on their Audius profile pages.”

Coopahtroopa 🔥ᴗ🔥 @CooopahtroopaThe most underrated part of this release is the ability to connect any wallet to your Audius account. This allows you to safely custody $AUDIO in a Ledger wallet and access VIP tiers. Who will join @RAC as a Platinum badge holder? (100k AUDIO) 👀

Audius Music 🎧 $AUDIO @AudiusProjectLink additional wallets (via MetaMask or WalletConnect) on your $AUDIO page (https://t.co/IHbIZ29NgK) and your NFTs will automatically show up on your profile if you have Silver Tier (100 $AUDIO) or above! More info here: https://t.co/O9mpObd9HP7:23 PM ∙ Apr 8, 202114Likes1Retweet

🔗 NFT Tech Stack: IOSG Ventures

“In the last post we covered what is an NFT and its basic classification. In this article we will cover in-detail the NFT tech stack and some of the use cases that have developed in the last few months. The NFT blockchain layer has existed for a long time and has seen success from some exceptional applications like Flow and WAX. Ethereum arguably remains the largest NFT blockchain and created the ERC721 standard.”

🔗 Introducing the Metaverse Index (MVI): Index Coop

“The Index Coop is excited to introduce the Metaverse Index — MVI. MVI is a basket of 15 tokens, designed to capture the trend of entertainment, sports and business shifting to a virtual environment. The index will be represented by an ERC20 token and will be available for purchase at tokensets.com.”

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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).