beincrypto.com
DeFi is hot right now, there’s no doubt about it. Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, which some argue has a slim selection of coins, has announced it’s expanding its lineup to include a trio of additional tokens, a move that will bring it deeper into the DeFi space.
Gemini Co-Founder Tyler Winklevoss made the announcement, saying in a tweet that the “DeFi revolution is upon us” and revealing that the cryptocurrency exchange will now accept deposits for AMP, PAXG and COMP. Trading in those tokens — digital collateral token Amp, interest rate protocol Compound and regulated USD stablecoin Paxos Standard — begins in mid-September.
Crypto Twitter largely cheered the news, though they have already set their sights on what they hope will be the next DeFi listing.
Far Cry From CryptoKitties
The last time the Ethereum network saw this much activity CryptoKitties was all the rage. Decentralized finance took off in June with the launch of Compound (COMP), which is built on the Ethereum blockchain. In addition to COMP, the other DeFi token on Gemini’s list is AMP.
AMP is a digital collateral token on the Flexa network, the latter of which is a digital payments platform. Flexa in recent days announced the migration of its FXC token to AMP, which lets users stake AMP as collateral that’s accessed when they make a purchase at a retailer using a Flexa-enabled app.
Gemini’s decision to expand its listings with two DeFi tokens comes on the heels of the SushiSwap scandal, which threatened to give the emerging market segment a bad name. The lesson that appears to be learned is that the DeFi space is still very young and very much an experiment, one that appears to be fueled by retail investors much like the ICO craze of 2017/2018 as institutional investors wait on the sidelines for it to mature.
CMC Lists Decentralized Hedgie NYAN
Cryptocurrency market data site CoinMarketCap also just added another DeFi name to its rankings — Nyan, a pseudo hedge fund that targets beginners for decentralized finance. The Nyan token is available on Uniswap in the ETH/NYAN pair, where it has total liquidity of $233,698 and volume over the last 24 hours of close to $2 million.
The ETH price has been a clear beneficiary to the DeFi craze as projects build their projects on the Ethereum network. Yield farming via smart contracts is fueling the demand for ETH, and for the time being the growth in this space appears to be a self-fulling prophecy.