Recap: DeFi Week of Sept. 16 🦄

Good morning defiers, hope you’re having a great weekend!

Summing up this past week: Ether climbed above $200 for the first time in five weeks, driven by increased network use. Daily transaction fees on Ethereum surpassed those on Bitcoin, mainly driven by Tether’s migration from Bitcoin-based Omni. Dai is trading at a premium in Argentina and China as savers use the stablecoin to skirt currency controls and protect against inflation. MakerDAO regains DeFi dominance after token holders cut rates once more and BitPay adds ether.

Guest Post

Ether is the Best Model for Money the World has Ever Seen: David Hoffman

David Hoffman, who has produced some of the most insightful content about Ethereum out there, describes how Ethereum is creating a new Internet of value and help you visualize how each piece fits together, with ether as the key gear making it all work. He argues that ether can be three types of asset at once: Store of value, capital, and transformative, and that this trifecta of value is a first in history and will be at the center of Web3. (Read more here)

Interview

In Traditional Financial Circles This Would be Considered "Nonsense": Kyle Kistner

Loans, with fixed interest that you can pay back whenever. Sounds too good to be true, if you can lock in low rates. Lending protocols bZx and Dharma recently said they plan to offer just this, indefinite term, fixed rate loans. bZx is building a platform specifically for these types of loans called Torque, and bZx co-founder Kyle Kistner explains how something like this could work. (Read more here)

News & Views

Thursday

• Savers Hit With Currency Controls are Turning to Dai: People in China and Argentina are paying a premium over MakerDao’s Dai stablecoin, to skirt their countries’ currency controls and protect against inflation.
• Ether Daily Transaction Fees are Higher Than Bitcoin’s: Ether is beating Bitcoin on a growing number of metrics, including daily transaction fees, signaling growing use for the second-largest cryptocurrency.

Tuesday

• BitPay Adds Ether: Businesses using BitPay, a global crypto payments provider, will soon be able to accept ether for purchases, in addition to bitcoin and bitcoin cash.
• MakerDAO Regains Dominance: Borrowers are flooding back into MakerDAO after token holders cut interest rates for a fourth time in a month to 12.5 percent.

Monday

• Ether is Rallying and It’s For the Right Reasons: Ether crossed $190 for the first time in three weeks, even as bitcoin declines, driven by rising network use.
• Synthetix Slashes Trader’s Wallet: The team behind Syhnthetix, an Ethereum-based platform for trading synthetic assets, slashed a trader’s balance after he attacked the system. This raised concerns that the project is excessively centralized.

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