4 ms·
Bitcoin is hard to wedge into DeFi, so the yields he was talking about were probably on centralized exchanges. He was likely even referring to Celsius, which ha
by px43 4y ago
Bitcoin is hard to wedge into DeFi, so the yields he was talking about were probably on centralized exchanges. He was likely even referring to Celsius, which has since popped. What has changed since then is DeFi tools like Thorchain single sided vault deposits that let people earn yield on Bitcoin without giving up custody. Unsurprisingly Erik has been one of the most vocal proponents of Thorchain itself.
For a really quick summary, Thorchain provides Uniswap style liquidity pools such as BTC/RUNE that allow people to do one shot trades that can be routed across major blockchains, and liquidity providers collect fees on every trade. Typically liquidity providers are also exposed to RUNE due to the nature of how XYK liquidity works. These new vaults are special because they lack RUNE exposure, but they are also only allowed to make up something like 10% of the liquidity pool, so deposits are limited.
I've been incredibly vocal about how anything promising >10% yields is a scam. It's the reason I built ponzi.finance (which never got popular, but was fun while it lasted). Yields greater than 10% are always either temporary, or straight up fraud. I'd still tend to agree with Erik though that your claim that you can't earn yield on BTC was incorrect, though the counter-party risk at the time was not ideal. Counter-party risk is, of course completely unavoidable in legacy finance systems, and the overhead costs to properly mitigate it are (IMO) unsustainable in a world with easily accessible DeFi tooling.
- lottin 4y agoCounter-party risk is what makes lending useful. The lender gives up control of the resources so that the borrower can use them. This is where the risk arises from. Defi has invented a new form of lending, without counter-party risk. It's "interesting" indeed but not very useful.