Update 3.10.2021 Alpha Sigma Capital holds Celsius in its portfolio alongside more than a dozen other blockchain-focused projects. Crypto lending platform Celsius Network is worth three times its current market capitalization, underscoring the project's massive growth potential over the next five years, according to new research from Alpha Sigma Capital. Using 2020 financials obtained from Celsius, Alpha Sigma Capital has determined that the crypto company has an implied value of $3.13 billion, which is approximately three times greater than its current market capitalization of $1.1 billion. It appears that “Celsius is currently undervalued," Alpha Sigma Capital said in its analysis, …

Non-collateralized borrowing and larger loans could start to be offered by the DeFi sector if decentralized digital identities are rolled out, a blockchain project says. Metaverse claims digital identities are an essential piece of infrastructure that’s currently missing from this thriving industry — despite the fact that they would allow protocols to offer personalized services, and achieve regulatory compliance. Digital identities normally consist of data including an online user’s search history, social media activity, usernames, national ID number, date of birth, and current location. The team behind Metaverse claims that this information can be put to good use without compromising …

In the latest feat of decentralized finance money Lego magic, lending platform Aave and automated market maker Balancer have teamed up on a hybrid liquidity-and-lending feature that may significantly fatten depositor yields. In a blog post on Tuesday, Balancer CEO Fernando Martinelli unveiled plans for the project, dubbed the Balancer V2 Asset Manager. In essence, the integration will allow users to earn two forms of return on their deposits: trading fees and yield farming from Balancer, in addition to lending interest from Aave. In Balancer’s current architecture, users deposit funds into a liquidity pool in order to enable decentralized asset …

HiFi — the recent rebrand of onetime decentralized application platform Mainframe, which is focused on decentralized finance — announced today the launch of a fixed-rate DeFi lending platform. “Fixed-rate lending is an important milestone for DeFi,” said HiFi CEO Doug Leonard in a press release. “Investors and traders need less-volatile options so that they can plan finances in advance, have predictability in expenses and hedge investments with certainty.” The launch is scheduled for 5:00 pm UTC. With a lending product, HiFi is entering into a marketplace featuring some stiff competition. Aave and Cream dominate with nearly $6 billion in total …

Celsius, a centralized cryptocurrency lending platform, claims to have paid out over $250 million in rewards to its 415,000 users, underscoring the rapid growth of blockchain lending protocols. Celsius announced the milestone in a Monday press release that highlighted the company’s significant growth over the past two years. “Celsius remains one of the fastest-growing companies in finance as it achieves new milestones week-over-week,” the company said. Unlike decentralized finance protocols, Celsius offers a centralized alternative that lets users deposit crypto assets onto its platform. The deposited assets are lent out to exchanges and market makers, with the vast majority of …

Japanese financial services firm SBI Group has enabled XRP lending through its cryptocurrency-related subsidiary, SBI VC Trade. According to a Feb. 4 announcement, SBI VC Trade Lending users can now earn interest by depositing their XRP holdings between 1,000 and 100,000 XRP, with the lending period lasting up to 84 days. “VC Trade Lending is a service that allows customers to rent out their crypto assets to the company and receive interest rewards according to the quantity and duration of the crypto assets,” SBI stated. The annual interest rate for lending XRP amounts to 0.1% with taxes included, the announcement …

Gemini cryptocurrency exchange has launched an interest-earning program for customers in the United States. Dubbed Gemini Earn, the program lets customers earn up to 7.4% annual interest on all cryptocurrencies supported by Gemini, the firm announced Tuesday. The platform supports 26 cryptos like Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Zcash (ZEC) and others. The program is immediately available for select Gemini customers, while a full-scale rollout is scheduled for early February. Gemini chief operating officer Noah Perlman told Cointelegraph that interest rates for each cryptocurrency are based on supply and demand in the market for borrowing that …

Little by little, cryptocurrencies are becoming a bigger part of the financial ecosystem. Mainstream platforms such as PayPal are allowing users to buy and sell digital assets, Bitcoin is attracting favorable column inches in newspapers, and countries are unveiling regulatory frameworks that allow virtual currencies to thrive. But one startup argues that there’s a major hurdle that’s yet to be meaningfully addressed: Giving crypto enthusiasts a trusted marketplace where they can spend their coins freely. DeFi For You says it is building an e-commerce platform that’s based on the Binance Smart Chain where goods can be bought, sold, rented and …

Multiple decentralized finance (DeFi) projects are moving forward with plans to allow liquidity provider tokens as collateral for stablecoin and lending services — though experts caution that the security considerations associated with using LP tokens in this manner can be complex. LP tokens are distributed to liquidity providers on automated market makers (AMMs) to represent a provider’s stake in a liquidity pool. Providers are incentivized with trading and protocol fees that are paid out upon withdrawal. While they’re often the last stop in a cycle of yield farming transactions, multiple DeFi platforms are now considering using them as collateral, including …

The Cream Finance project, a lending protocol that recently merged into the Yearn ecosystem, announced the upcoming launch of its Iron Bank feature, a name inspired by the once-popular TV show Game Of Thrones. Cream’s Iron Bank is an attempt to create a decentralized finance equivalent of corporate debt. The announcement, released on Thursday, explains how the market for peer-to-peer lending in traditional finance, worth $70 billion, pales in comparison with the world of corporate credit, with $10 trillion in loans outstanding. To create a similar industry in DeFi, Cream is now allowing other protocols to borrow funds without posting …

In a largely celebratory community call devoted in part to commemorating lending protocol Aave’s January 8th “Aaveversary” — a full year of Aave on Ethereum mainnet — there was also a look into Aave’s possible future: a proposal from Delphi Digital seeking to fundamentally alter Aave’s Safety Module and create a new insurance product offering. Currently, $aave governance token holders can stake their tokens in the Safety Module, a pool of liquidity designed to help insure the protocol against a “shortfall event” such as a smart contract exploit. Stakers risk up to 30% of funds they lock in the Module, …

After a wild, up-and-down 2020 that saw Sushiswap become the largest decentralized exchange (DEX) by liquidity at two different points, the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform has released a wildly ambitious project roadmap for 2021. Key forthcoming developments include multiple examples of some of the most complex and advanced functionalities in the DeFi space, including a cross-chain DEX that will be enabled by Rune and Moonbeam, an implementation on the Polkadot chain, and a fully decentralized governance structure by the end of 2021. The post also provided updates on previously-announced projects, including a v2 launch called Mirin and a mid-January target …