DeFi digital finance stack - Discussion

Defi 101 Course
#348

one big reason is because one can borrow against their own collateral as well. The borrowed funds are used in a leveraged trade, while the original collateral remains locked up. This is essentially a double long posture toward the market. it could also be used to hedge as a short

example 2
I think ethereum is going to go up substantially in the coming weeks or days. I put 10 ether into a smart contact as loaned liquidity to a market pool. Against that ether I make small interest. Also that deposit allows me to borrow ether at a reasonable interest rate approximately 5 ether.
I have two choices at this point to allocate these borrowed funds in the market.I can extend my long position ( basically locking the inital 10 eth is a long play) by using the borrowed funds to make a leveraged long play, lets say 5 x just as an example. If eth goes up 20%from todays spot price around 400 usd, my 25 eth play makes me $2000,and i had a near zero cost to enter the trade. also my original 10 eth collateral made me an additional $800 plus the interest ganied form the liquidity pool.
On the other hand, lets say i want to make a short play to cover any potential loss on spot price in the interem. I take my ether borrowed, 5, and margin short it at 5x. If the market goes down 20%, i made $80 for each eth times the lererage. which in this case is 80 X 25= 2000. my original eth lost $800 in total value, but my short made me 2kā€¦ net profit of $1200ā€¦
interestingly enough i could then flip my trade at my tp point back to lon,taking the discount on the new price of ether, and if it returns back to the original spot price I could potentially make another 2000 on top with borrowed funds at relatively low interestā€¦

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#349

Thanks for the update on the viable usages of this new innovative technology. Glad to hear that your able to utilize this tech to your advantage! I agree totally that the crypto markets are showing clear signs of bullish behavior. I think we are in for a profitable ride. Gold and silver is also on a tear and I think that is all in direct relation to the money printing that both you & Armandeo have mentioned that is going on to date.

The metric used for valuating cryptocurrency is seriously overdue for an upgrade! The USD is rapidly devaluing so who knows what will become the mainstay base currency to determine all pricing going forward? I guess time will tell, but ultimately it makes sense to have a good portion of our wealth stored in crypto.

Iā€™m still learning when it comes to trading. These complex setups that you discussed are very interesting plays but currently beyond my understandings. Nothing that canā€™t ultimately be corrected with acquiring more knowledge, application, testing, reviewing and adjusting. The content that we are covering in this course has certainly been a big learning curve so for now Iā€™m just going to focus on this. One thing is for sure, like Ivan says, Iā€™m glad that Iā€™ve got some bags and that they are now growing in value!!! :smiley:

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#350

seems like youā€™re reading my mind, lol ā€¦ I wish I had a solid answer, but Iā€™m still exploring options at the moment.

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#351

Absorbed into DeFi and fascinated by what amadeobrands has to teach. A part of the Defi stack I find myself looking into now is Selfkey a self sovereign identity platform ,stimulating best practices when it comes to KYC.
Have any thoughts on the project?

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#352

Hey Amadeo, fantastic course. Thank you. I had no idea I can insure my DeFi investments. I currently have deposited some ETH & AMPL into the Uniswap V2 liquidity pool. I then deposited the token received into Ampleforthā€™s Geyser. I did all of this through the Zapper.fi dashboard to keep everything in one place. I also desposited a bit into the SNX/REN balancer pool. I need to search for an insurance protocol that covers Balancer Uniswap the Geyser and Synthetix as I will explore their exchange next. :beers:

*Do you have any insight into Unilend and how it can help/hurt the DeFi ecosystem?

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#353

1.)Plutus Defi appears to be an interesting project for staking, (without having to lock up your money) if they can get it off the ground and running.

2.) I have been looking at the Cardano and Tazos blockchains when it comes to new up and coming Blockchains. Cardano being the one that is moving forward the most of the 2 right now.

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#354

Great content. Thanks

I havenā€™t see a lot of DeFi infrastructure in other Blockchains except Ether, but mature projects like Cardano, EOS, and Tezos are pretty good at doing their staking (I think staking count as a DeFi also, imo)

I believe borrowing and lending Ether and ERC-20 tokens is just the beginning. As NFT industry brings to adoption, people will use DeFi on the gaming NFT assets as well.

the following website talks about a project doing fractional NFTs using DeFi

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#355

When I first got into crypto around Xmas 2017 I spent a lot of time thinking about what I was gonna do with all my gains, turned out I didnā€™t need to worry at that time :sunglasses:

Now things are different, here we all are, expectations rising, massive bull run comingā€¦ still trying to time the markets and getting it wrongā€¦ but who knows what will happen round the corner.

I just think DCA into projects you believe in, HODL, take staking profits out when they present themselves, be in it for the long term, learn to code, build the future and donā€™t worry too much about the $$$

Of course, when youā€™re not sitting on a very big pile to begin with its not quite so serious a questionā€¦ and also wish I would listen to my own advice a bit more :slight_smile:

peace

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#356

@amadeobrands Thank you for the links, it really helps round out the course. Itā€™s amazing how quickly this area expanded since you recorded this class (just 5 months ago!).

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#357

Thought this was a nice realtime visualisation of blockchain transactions txstreet.com ā€¦ realtime developments in a fun way!

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#358

Hi everyone,

As with other members, I am thankful for Amadeoā€™s guidance to this complicated (and sometimes annoying) space of DeFi. Iā€™ve been playing around with some DEXs, depositing some DAIs, and buying some tickets on PoolTogether. I totally enjoyed the decentralized and permissionless environment, but I also found the transaction costs and speed are far from ideal, especially for small players like myself.

I also tried to read the news for some new developments in DeFi and found a project called Serum quite interesting. (I cannot recall if Amadeo has mentioned it in his lectures; pardon me if I am repeating his materials.)

https://projectserum.com/


It is another attempt on DEX that tries to imitate the convenience and efficiency of centralized exchanges. I think the project is still under development and have just issued their ICO in August 2020. I am not knowledgeable enough to judge whether it is a good project or not, but their objectives, as described in their whitepaper, seems to be offering solutions to some of the major hurdles in DeFi ā€“ transaction speed, transaction fees, limit-order permitting orderbooks, cross-chain transactions, towards less reliance on trusted oracles, bringing BTC to other blockchains, stable coin solution that does not require trusted depository of USD, etc. Sounds exciting to me if the promises can be delivered. Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Eric

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#359

@amadeobrands I know it has been several months since you made this course however over the past few months the Defi Pulse has shown some incredible numbers regarding the total value locked (TVL). In fact just in July it went from 2B to it current 4.63B value. You are seeing more integration with how CEFI works in regards to credit cards, fiat on ramps, etc. Derivatives (the biggest market) expanding into exchanges. Precious metals can be bought with virtual currency. Programs like DEXT integrating liquidity pool / pairs into instant access capability. DEXā€™s like 1inch, uniswap, kyber are simply killing it in volume. 1inch allows you to put limits buys on potential purchases. I mean the competition amongst all these new DEFI options is creating brilliant new technology capabilities and access to markets that were not previously available to the average Joe (at least not easily).

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#360

Is it possible to get insurance on ANY smart contract / token that will earn interest / commissions? Can I create a contract and get insurance on it? Are all services / platforms going to INCENTIVIZE everyone on everything?

Wild stuff! Thanks!

#361

Hello Amadeo,
Great course! I am new to crypto in general and question whether I took this course too soon, but I have the option to go back to the videos and apply what I am learning each and everyday.
There are so many options in DeFi, it is no wonder that people are rethinking about banking in the traditional sense. With the inherent risks, it is good to see that there is insurance available to mitigate these risks.
As for myself, I want explore into lending on Maker and Insurance and keep my fingers on the pulse for new projects that come up.

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#362

My go to for swap will be Uniswap!

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#363

Very interesting discussions went through all of these threads below. One of the things that I personally donā€™t like is that things have to be very black and white in crypto and as such Defiā€¦however in practice things just arenā€™t the way they are initially envisioned to be like. It generally seems to me that people are most interested in gains from assets and not the thing the cryptos can do. Technology is often a side note till we look for the next big thingā€¦ So if we as humans are looking for appreciating asset prices and people hoarding cryptos even in Defi for price appreciation (such as staking) why would the mass population in general adopt cryptos and defi? Cryptos are synthetically price fixing mechanisms and they are measured in terms of fiat. So in essence people want fiat not cryptos because characteristically cryptos are disinflationary and a store of value but they canā€™t be used as money because they canā€™t inflate and provide accelerated Money supply growth. Just wondering that we are doing these elaborate things for something that follows a binary path without flexibility. We can over collateralize but not bring value to a token by itself if it has no use case and/or nobody wants to use itā€¦ Sorry to have such a scrambled thought process but I guess the main point Iā€™m asking is that are we just doing a whole lot of nothing because at the end people will only feel comfortable with a processes by we which they can communicate and trust a central authoritative body whom they abdicate there trust to that they believe will do things that are best for themā€¦when I used to audit companies there were so many situations where judgement needed to be appliedā€¦ It just wasnā€™t so black and whiteā€¦the point being as a user I cannot go through such elaborative processes without any assurances outside of me. Sure you can say that people are in charge of their own destinies but how many people really do have faith in protecting themselves (remember to store or keep keys and trust close people with such items of information)ā€¦ thanks for listeningā€¦

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#364

Currently I am listening to alot of info about yield farming and YAM.finance, facinating! Sadly I am a ā€œunderstanding the detailsā€ personality before diving in and loosing opportunities on it. :wink:

#365

I do not really understand what they do but overall I can say we are entering very uncharted waters in general ā€¦ risk are stack stack stacked more and more ā€¦ WATCH OUT WHAT

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#366

Amazing I do am a bid in love with Serum :smiley:
I manged to get some tokens and are actively talking with the team.

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#367

I think my DeFi course was great timing ā€¦ Wich I stacked some more DeFi coins lol
But this will serve as a good base layer for what is to come I tend to see the content as timeless sice the fundemntal knowlage needed will not change.

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