The Blockchain is mind-boggling in terms of the possibilities it wields. Today its main functionality lies in the authentication of transactions from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. But its practicalities lie much deeper.
DeFi, which stands for Decentralized Finance, is the main use case for the various networks of blockchains and digital exchanges. Some even say DeFi could rewrite the way we manage our entire financial system, with banking, savings, borrowing, loans, and trading, sitting in an ecosystem that removes the intermediary. Our transactions are private and anonymous, our data is protected, as unlike with Centralized Finance, it does not sit on anyone’s server. But rather it is distributed across a broad network of computers (nodes), with all activities automatically being verified on the blockchain.
In this era of zero interest, one thing that the blockchain can offer users that the traditional banking system cannot is generous yield. Users can get yield by farming or staking their crypto holdings of upt 8% or more. Some platforms allow users to loan their crypto holdings to peers in exchange for passive income.
Outside of finance, there are hundreds of new projects being born across prediction markets, gaming, charitable apps, security, and many more besides. Finance is just the beginning.
Let’s look at the main platforms to understand why the blockchain is performing so well for finance.
Balancer
Balancer offers portfolio management, ok this is strictly finance but is definitely worth mentioning. Wealth managers or portfolio managers traditionally manage wealthy investors’ portfolios. They of course retain custody of the clients funds and the client usually pays in addition to performance fees, management fees and custodial fees which quickly rack up.
Balancer offers a way for high net worth crypto users to invest their holdings using an algorithm that manages their funds, while taking advantage of the high returns available through the blockchain. It maximises yield, while minimizing risk without human involvement.
It is programmed for optimal portfolio building and balancing and diversifies the portfolio on the client’s behalf, and it does all this at a fraction of the cost of what human wealth managers charge. On the other hand it allows clients to trade on their behalf, and gets the best price possible per trade as a result of liquidity mining.
Balancer will go down as one of the foundational building blocks of the futuristic DeFi economy.
Public Mint
Public Mint was founded by the co-founder of Salesforce and it positions itself as the gateway to DeFi by bringing some of the best opportunities available on the blockchain to even the unbanked. These include access to some of the very best yielding returns for dormant crypto holdings. Public Mint can be used instead of a bank, where users can make payments to anyone, anywhere, and they can save money in return for high yield.
The protocol merges the best of fiat and native tokens onto the blockchain, while promising efficiency and accessibility to the masses.
Businesses that use Public Mint can receive payments of USD over credit cards and wire transfers even without having a bank account. On top of all of this users can pay bills and conduct their invoicing on the Public Miint platform with extremely low fees for the service.
CoinZoom
CoinZoom, is a crypto exchange in the US, registered by the Money Services Business (MSB) across 48 states, as well as being licensed as a money transmitter in 45 states. The Australian branch of CoinZoom, has a Digital Currency Exchange License by AUSTRAC. The fact that this exchange has voluntarily decided to take this route of regulation already says a lot about the company.
When you open an account with CoinZoom, and deposit a minimum of $100, straight off the bat you get $10 credited into your account, which you can use to buy Bitcoin and other assets. CoinZoom has teamed up with Visa to offer a credit card, which allows users to spend their crypto holdings at over 53 million merchants currently in the US (but soon globally), while getting rebates from spending of between 1-5%.
CoinZoom also offers a remittance service, ZoomMe, much like Paypal but with a focus on cryptocurrencies, in order to pay other people, without needing a crypto wallet and with zero commissions for sending money.
The Bottom Line
The crypto savvy are already aware of the deep benefits that transacting and conducting their activity over the blockchain brings. The crypto-curious can use any of these platforms or the hundreds of products out there to simply and efficiently conduct their transactions. But it doesn’t stop there, innovation on the blockchain is moving fast and over the course of the next few years we will see solutions and possibilities that we haven’t even dreamed about.
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