Current Prices and Rankings of Cryptocurrency Coins

In 2018, a new segment of the crypto market, known as decentralized financial services, appeared in the framework of open source projects. Cryptocurrency loans and collateral came into demand after the collapse in prices and against the backdrop of the year-long drawdown following the Crypto Winter. In order to stay afloat, traders took out loans against tokens and investors deposited their crypto assets.

What is DeFi in cryptocurrency?

Decentralized finances are an innovative cryptocurrency P2P lending market. Blockchain developers have created a new equivalent to traditional financial instruments in peer-to-peer architecture, with token holders facilitating its spread.

The majority of decentralized applications and smart contracts for DeFi operate in Ethereum. This blockchain platform has outstripped its competitors in terms of the number of users and turnover. Vitalik Buterin believes that DeFi services based on Ethereum create significant value for users and have already made great strides.

In DeFi, lending is secured by crypto assets. Bitcoins are accepted as collateral in centralized services. In non-custodial decentralized platforms, mainly ethers and ERC-20 standard tokens are collateralized.

Advantages and disadvantages

DeFi is still being developed, but it already has significant advantages over traditional banking services:

• Autonomy. There is no need for intermediaries.
• Privacy. Supervisory authorities don’t track participants’ activity.
• Advantageous rates. Services offer floating annual rates, which are significantly lower than banking rates.
• High-yield instruments. Decentralized exchanges with loan services offer synthetic assets and derivatives.

DeFi projects attract IEO and STO participants, traders, exchanger owners, and everyday lenders looking for alternatives to banking services. They’re convenient and useful for people from countries where banks are hard to access or have increased interest rates.

The DeFi market follows the laws of economics; it can also suffer from depressions, but they alternate with revivals and rises. One of the main problems is believed to be the lack of fully decentralized applications and obligatory audits for smart contracts.

Prospects for DeFi

According to CoinCap’s estimates, the total amount of cryptocurrency loans given out is now over $3 billion and the current amount of collateral held is $1 billion. The number of prospective DeFi projects is growing, attracting the interest of former Wall Street traders. By our predictions, decentralized financial services will have attracted another $1 billion by the end of 2020.