Is Shapeshift a decentralized exchange? If not, how does it work differently than a DeEx?
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Amazing.
I love these kinds of concepts 
Always watch out since these kinds of protocols are very hard to execute so just test it but do not put all your funds in it.
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Gāday Amadeo,
Iāve found a market place for rear digital goods.
OpenSea: URL: https://opensea.io/
The worldās largest digital marketplace for crypto collectibles and non-fungible tokens (NFTās), including ERC721 and ERC1155 assets. Buy, sell, and discover exclusive digital assets like Gods Unchained Cards, ENS names, CryptoKitties, Decentraland land, and much, much more.
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I feel Originprotocol would the project to be added in your list.
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Morning Amadeo, I am really enjoying this course, had a few things to deal with the past couple of weeks
but so happy to be able to get back to my desk & workā¦ 
Well I had a nosey and come up with HDAOā¦HyperDao, they are newly formed and are working out of Singapore, offering decentralized financial services to Global users.
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Hi there!
An interesting DeFi project to watch is Zora - a marketplace to buy, sell and trade limited-edition goods.
An another one is more of a CeFi project called YouHodler offering high-yielding savings account on crypto. For exemple, one can earn 12% on DAI or USDT!
Cheers
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Hello all,
I am fairly active learning in this space. I am participating in CeFi and Defi. I use BlockFi and Crypto.com, but also have tried out Compound. Unfortunately the Compound rates have dropped significantly, so I took out my Dai. I do agree with Amadeo - not your keys not your crypto, but I am willing to take a risk with decent companies.
For me, I am extremely excited about legit staking projects. Eth 2.0 and KyberDao are on my watch lists.
Dustin
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Amadeo,
What do you expect to be the time it will take for DeFi to substantially compete with CeFi? I am asking this especially also with respect to poorer countries because you mentioned that one of the great advances that comes with DeFi technology will be the making available of advanced financial services to people in underdeveloped parts of the world. Are we talking about a couple of years, half a decade, or a decade?
Thank you for your effort in providing all the information in your videos.
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Hi,
I donāt know if this counts, but my dad got me hip to the Crypto wallet app. They gave me 50 USD for signing up and another 50 for telling a friend. You can use it to purchase their MCO tokens. They offer Debit cards where you can buy, sell, or trade as well. If you get a debit card with them you can get Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Expedia reimbursements. They also give % back on spending and % MCO stake Rewards. The only downside I see thus far is that you canāt withdraw your MCO tokens after 6 months once you enroll into their debit card program. I tried to purchase DAI with the money I got from them, but they wouldnāt let me and I think its because it has to go to their MCO tokens. Overall, Iām still new to this so I havenāt had the opportunity to learn how you would conduct formal research when investigating DeFi projects, but I will be learning in the near future.
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Hello guys, this dApp seems interesting, but the description and information on the curve website and online in general is limited.
Is this a compound function where you can deposit funds and the curve dApp will automatically find the best interest-rate swaps between the tokens in its list for all eternity?
Or is it perhaps not possible to make money on this compound function yet due to high fees and transaction costs (set to infinity)?!
If I have understood this dApp correctly, I would like to test to risk about 1 ETH of value, but obviously not if the transaction cost of each swap exceeds the accrued interest (as this would guarantee to quickly turn my deposit to ā0ā).
Thank you for taking your time!
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I completely agree with you. Itās mostly for the purposes of keeping the sham concept of a āstablecoinā like DAI afloat. Otherwise, it would be impossible to maintain the peg during a black swan event without resorting to over-collateralization.
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(also responding to @aenhsaihanās response):
By using your crypto as collateral, you donāt have to crystallize capital gains on your existing crypto. For example, if you bought BTC at $5k and itās currently $10k, you can leverage your BTC to borrow other crypto that you believe will increase in value at a greater rate than the borrow rate.
The benefit there is that you are able to benefit from the increased value of the BTC without actually having to liquidate it (and have to pay tax in the process), which would be the case if you expect its value to continue to increase in the future.
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I actually had a question about this regarding synthetics. If I go long on sBTC and then sell it for a profit, does this mean I donāt have to pay taxes on it either?
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To my knowledge, the moment you sell a crypto or trade one for another, then you crystallize your capital gains. So if you long sBTC and then sell it for a profit, then youād have to pay taxes.
My educated guess is that your cost base would be the spot rate of sBTC on the day you got it.
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So, itās very similar to how you would borrow an altcoin using your BTC example as collateral and youād have to pay taxes the moment you liquidate your loan at a profit?
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Thatās my educated guess, yeah. The benefit was that you were able to use the BTC at a higher value for the initial loan. So your gains are higher on that value (i.e. 10% return on $10k is higher than 10% of $7.5k if you had sold the BTC prior to taking out the loan and deducted tax).
If anyone thinks/knows otherwise, please do chime in!
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I am looking defi ecosystems.Learning a lot.
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this was very cool! i had no clue how deep the rabbit hole wentā¦ perhaps in the near future i can engage in a meaningful discussion. right now, iām just blown away at all of these things. thank you.
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Hi Amadeo,
I noticed that you are missing an overview image for the last assignment in defi 101. Perhaps it would look nicer to insert one.
BR
Filip
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Hey bro, just found this today, a sentiment that I largely agree with:
When you are involved long enough with crypto, youāll see a lot of stupid ideas. DAI is one of them.
For those who donāt have time to get into the weeds, DAI is a ādigital nativeā stable coin. It wants to create a 1-1 peg to USD using an underlying volatile asset, Ethereum. If you want to use USD, itās probably most efficient to go get USD. But for some ideological reasons (decentralization), DAI wants to be USD but also digital native. So they ālockā the underlying asset, Ethereum, and issue DAI coins. The premise is with intelligent computer algorithms, we can maintain 1-1 peg between a digital asset (Ethereum) and a real-world asset (USD).
Digital assets are digital. Humans are the arbitrageurs. Humans are emotional. DAI is trying to create stability on top of Ethereum volatility. Itās kinda like building a stable house on a shaky foundation. Your building will either collapse or you spend so much money patching the flaws of your shaky foundation. This is a laughable idea for those who live in reality. But I guess some computer programmers/investors live in alternative realities too long. They forget about reality.
Whatever your algorithms are, you need to arbitrage risks. So you will always need to lock up more USD-ETH to account for risks. To be safe, maybe, you need 1.5 USD-ETH for a DAI USD. However, with digital scarce and volatile assets like Ethereum, thereās a chance that 1.5 USD-ETH will drop to 0.9 USD-ETH. At that point, you will be underwater. Yesterday, it did. If you need to lock up 1.5 USD for 1 USD, you may as well go get 1 USD. Itās a dumb idea to use 1.5 USD to get 1 USD.
DAI has a lot of jargon and technology (more layers on top of the shaky foundation). These things make it look sophisticated and fool people. The basic problem is very simple. You only need elementary school arithmetic and logic to know its flaws and inefficiency.
I found the post on this website when researching about MakerDAO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22562262
I think the discussion there is quite interesting as well.
Again, not my opinion but I do agree with him somewhat. Would love to spark conversation here as well regarding the subject.
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