Bitcoin Suisse now offers decentralized financial services (DeFi) to its customers with the addition of the Liquidity protocol to their product line. Clients can use it to embed Ether (ETH) into the protocol as collateral to mint and borrow stablecoin Liquity Dollar (LUSD).
In an April 20 announcement, Bitcoin Suisse said the company would handle all smart contract interactions and system monitoring on behalf of its customers, and allow borrowed LUSD tokens to be exchanged in any fiat currency.
Founded in 2013, Bitcoin Suisse is a core crypto and financial services company in Switzerland offering services such as cryptocurrency trading, custody, lending and staking for most institutional investors.
Liquidity is a DeFi lending protocol launched in April 2021. Users can use it to pledge ETH in smart contracts as collateral and borrow the native stablecoin LUSD at a 0% interest rate. Liquidity currently has a total value of over $1.1 billion locked away in its smart contract.
Dirk Klee, CEO of Bitcoin Suisse, said the company is proud to take a “significant step” towards decentralized solutions for its customers:
“DeFi offers significant improvements over traditional financial services as it is more open, transparent and competitive.”
Bitcoin Suisse says it is in a pilot phase and will only be available to a “very small number” of customers. The loan amount is more than $500,000.
CeFi makes DeFi its new rails. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Keep an eye on this, people! https://t.co/YfB3Zg21Qk
— Ash (@ashleighschap) April 20, 2022
DeFi is becoming more and more interesting for the crypto sector and for traditional finance. The current total value locked (TVL) across the entire ecosystem is nearly $215 billion, according to DefiLlama. On December 2, 2021, this sector reached its all-time high of $254.8 billion.
In this context: Crypto staking in the DeFi ecosystem
Centralized platforms are increasingly leveraging DeFi infrastructure, either offering centralized access to decentralized services or backing their products with DeFi smart contracts or liquidity.
In March, Binance introduced a PancakeSwap decentralized exchange (DEX) capability into the Binance app, integrating the DEX into its centralized platform in the process. During the same month, the exchange also released an updated blockchain bridge. With this, assets can be linked to any blockchain.
Australian finance app Blockearner is backing its yield account, which promises a 7% annual return, with DeFi lending protocols Aave and Compound Finance. Users simply deposit Australian dollars, which the app then invests in DeFi on their behalf.
Bitcoin Suisse has been integrating cryptographic technology into its offering for a long time. In November 2021, the company became the first cryptocurrency payment provider in Switzerland to integrate the Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning network to “encourage wider adoption of crypto technology”.
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