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CollectionsThe DeFi Guy

The DeFi Guy

Our DeFi critic, Colin Platt, reviews the most interesting consumer-facing decentralized finance sites, dapps and protocols each week.

CollectionLast updated Apr 20, 2020
Apr 20

What is Compound?

In a traditional savings account, you put money into the bank and earn interest on that money. The problem is that regular bank customers are not able to use their deposited, interest-earning money in any other way once it’s in the bank. What if you could spend the money your savings earned while still saving? That's an idea DeFi, or decentralized finance is hoping to solve.  One of the companies working on offering this service in the DeFi world is Compound. Below we explore how this Ethereum b...

Mar 27
1inch aggregates DEXs to find the best price.

Finding the best prices across crypto markets

While some argue that it’s easy for me to sit here and take pot shots at DeFi projects (and my readers), I demur. Balancing my firebrand nihilism with some level of subject matter competence is no less miraculous than the fact that 90% of DeFi projects haven’t collapsed before the altar of the Peter Principle. That said, there are a few projects that even I must admit, are pretty good. And 1inch is one of these rare beasts. What is 1inch? 1inch is an aggregator of decentralized exchanges (DEXs)....

NewsDeFi
6 min read
Colin Platt
Mar 20
Maker website. Image: Shutterstock

MakerDAO: What went wrong and how it was fixed

Last week’s sell-off was brutal for everyone in crypto. While the fall in the price of Bitcoin, Ether and pretty much every other cryptocurrency brought a world of pain to holders, stablecoins become a refuge of sorts. MakerDAO’s soft-pegged stablecoin (meaning it targets, but doesn’t promise a 1:1 exchange rate with USD), took things to extremes, moving up to $1.10 and beyond as the price of ETH dropped precipitously. Source via dai.stablecoin.science Some might construe the news that DAI, whic...

NewsDeFi
8 min read
Colin Platt
Mar 13
High gas prices crippled DeFi this week

DeFi's darkest day: Rekt like me

Yesterday, as I sat down to write this, the crypto markets and DeFi were puking their guts out.  When it seemed like everyone and their dogs wanted out at any cost, there was in fact one thing mooning: gas prices. Image via ethgasstation.info   The sky rocketing price of gas is—like everything else going on this week—not a good thing for the fabulous world of DeFi. How "gas" fuels Ethereum transactions You know what gas prices are, of course. Ethereum transactions incur a fee, which is paid to m...

NewsDeFi
5 min read
Colin Platt
Mar 6

Buying and selling the dreaded CoronaToken

Coronavirus has gripped the globe, with fear and ambivalence seemingly in equal measure. Because here in crypto our apparent modus operandi is “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” we now have a 4chan-developed CoronaToken, because of course we do. And I intend to buy a couple, in the interests of science. Image via Coronatoken.org To do this, I head over to the Saturn Network, which, it turns out, is on the D List of decentralized exchanges. Like other decentralized exchanges and token swap pl...

NewsDeFi
7 min read
Colin Platt
Feb 28
Image: Shutterstock

Stablecoins from heaven: Trading on Curve

Curve Finance is a platform for trading stablecoins. You know, of course what stablecoins are?  With crypto prices going up and down a lot—especially the down this week—proponents love a token, whose value matches the US Dollar as a path toward great adoption. There are drawbacks, however, with most stablecoins requiring bank deposits sitting in those institutions that some want to disintermediate. What we have also seen from the first generation of stablecoins is that they don’t always match on...

NewsDeFi
8 min read
Colin Platt
Feb 21
Fulcrum lets you borrow or lend money in an instant.

Fulcrum: a high stakes way to borrow and lend ETH

It’s been a horrible or exciting week—depending on whom you ask—for DeFi. No one had it more than the team at bZx network, the group behind DeFi margin-lending and borrowing platform, Fulcrum. On February 14, Valentine’s Day, a hacker/trader (depending, again, on whom you ask) managed to create a transaction that earned them a roughly $350,000 profit at the expense of Fulcrum users. The bZx team responded by freezing the platform, opening it a day later and issuing a post-mortem explaining the a...

NewsDeFi
5 min read
Colin Platt
Feb 14
Tron CEO Justin Sun. Image: Tron Foundation

Tron—daring to DeFi

During the past week, as is frequently the case on crypto Twitter, people lost their minds. This time it was because prominent Bitcoin personality, Rodolfo Novak shared a photo showing Novak, Adam Back (Blockstream CEO) and Justin Sun (Tron's beloved founder) together at the annual Satoshi Roundtable conference, hinting—read trolling—at a collaboration between Tron and the Blockstream Liquid Network. The reaction from many in the Ethereum community was one of considered, well-reasoned responses....

NewsDeFi
6 min read
Colin Platt
Feb 8
Margin trading is risky.

Using Ethereum to margin trade: Fun with dY/dX

Last week I alluded to dY/dX, a platform for margin trading—think of this as trading with coins that you don’t own. So this week seemed like it would be good to go deeper into the mysteries of margin trading. From an outsider’s perspective dY/dX is likely a cryptic name. It’s mathematics— “dY/dX” is notation for the "derivative of Y with respect to X." Now that we know that, it probably comes as no surprise that dY/dX handles derivatives products, but it’s DeFi. More specifically, dY/dX offers m...

NewsDeFi
6 min read
Colin Platt
Jan 31
Synthetix creates DeFi derivatives

Synthetix: A platform for trading Ethereum-based DeFi derivatives

I started my career working in structured products, which are complex derivatives, often matched with cash investments (bonds). We liked to joke that we sold people math equations. The reality wasn’t far from that. Why am I telling you this? This week we’re looking at Synthetix, which describes itself as a “decentralized synthetic asset platform that provides on-chain exposure to real-world currencies, commodities, stocks, and indices.” That sounds like a math equation in itself. Before moving o...

NewsDeFi
9 min read
Colin Platt
Jan 17

MakerDAO: How to be your own pawnshop

MakerDAO has a lot of skeptics. While most of these critics never bothered to actually try it, they’re all too happy to tell people that it’s “too complicated.” With the DAI Savings Rate moving up to 6% annually this week, some people  are even calling it a Ponzi scheme, and worse. Classy. Maybe they’re too harsh, so let’s get to the bottom of this. Pawning the family jewels For anyone that has never pawned anything in their privileged lives, here’s how you do it. Let’s say you’ve got something...

NewsDeFi
7 min read
Colin Platt