The gathering of non-fungibles
Last week’s NFT.NYC event assembled more than 15,000 attendees at its 4th inaugural conference in Times Square. Amid the turbulent market conditions, the guests maintained an optimistic posture, proving the culture is alive and well.Â
Among the crowd were teams building strong brands, with some scaling their projects into entire content platforms, including film and TV.Â
Republic Crypto Director Graham Friedman was one of the attendees. Here was his take on the overwhelmingly vibrant community of creators.
“It’s fun to watch this evolve through the conferences like Consensus and NFT.NYC. We’ve been extremely bullish due to the amount of energy and brainpower going into the space from the younger generations… projects are making a name for themselves.”
TradFi is circling centralized DeFi Â
Much of the negative sentiment towards crypto of late has been driven by centralized DeFi platforms like Celsius. The crypto loan network is facing a potential bankruptcy after employing several unsuccessful DeFi strategies that have jeopardized investors’ assets.Â
Now, Goldman Sachs is looking to gobble up Celsius’ assets on the cheap. Coindesk reported that the Wall Street darling is currently collecting interest from various cryptocurrency funds and traditional financial institutions to purchase the distressed company's tokens.
The irony…
 © Piaras Ă“ MĂdheach/Getty Images
When Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, his goal was to take financial control back from financial elites, not the other way around. Luckily, the outlook for DeFi remains positive, as long as the industry continues to build better interfaces for decentralized platforms—giving investors easier ways to store their crypto in a sovereign (but more recoverable) way.
Meanwhile, on-chain DeFi is doing just fineÂ
Decentralized lending platforms like AAVE, Curve, and Uniswap have unwound successfully, permitted redemptions, and haven't had to close any wallets, which is a bullish sign for on-chain DeFi.Â
Curve was built to prevent what is happening to Celsius. The Ethereum-based exchange liquidity pool acts like a market maker in traditional finance, providing buy and sell orders to users willing to trade at the current market price. The liquidity pool is managed by a smart contract that governs the rules and allocation of funds. The contract is programmed to match orders from buyers and sellers automatically and execute trades at the best price.Â
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