The new Bitwise DeFi Crypto Index Fund seeks to take advantage of the rapidly growing DeFi market, which is increasingly seen as a viable alternative to traditional finance, offering peer-to-peer financial services like loans and lending, decentralized exchanges, and derivatives, among others.
“Banteg”—a core developer on the DeFi protocol whose Twitter bio says they are “ahead of the curve”—confirmed that the vault ended up losing $11 million. He went on to sow confusion by saying that deposits had been disabled while an investigation took place… and later confirmed that this isn’t possible given how the ecosystem is decentralized.
Bittrex CEO Tom Albright explained that this year “has seen huge growth in DeFi as an asset class and a number of significant milestones completed.” He believes that as the industry matures more institutional and professional investors will look at its fundamentals and consequently “we are likely to see increased demand and higher trading volumes for DeFi in 2021.”
The cryptocurrency lending industry has been booming lately, with the options to borrow against holdings or earn interest by making loans becoming easier to find. But the interest rates seem too good to be true.
