WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF
The Web 3.0, crypto, and digital asset economies are surging even as the crypto markets themselves crash which now means that it looks like these trends are unstoppable.
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Step back a decade ago and very very few people were talking about crypto or the blockchain, but now in a seeming coming of age for the technologies new numbers from cryptocurrency data firm Messari show the Ethereum network, which is just one of many, settled a staggering $2.5 trillion in financial transactions in the second quarter of 2021.
Messari senior research analyst Ryan Watkin says the number suggests that the blockchain is now on track to hit $8 trillion in transactions, or almost 10% of the global economy by GDP, by the end of the year and added that the surge in demand seems primarily due to a boom in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and Stablecoins, the latter of which just suffered some major losses …
The Future of Finance, by keynote speaker Matthew Griffin
Between April and June, Decentralized Exchange (DEX) volumes, for example, reached $405 billion, marking an amazing increase of 117x year over year and an 83% increase from the first-quarter numbers. Outstanding loans in lending platforms also increased by 44% over the quarter, according to Messari’s Q2 2021 DeFi Review. Messari adds that the rollout of layer 2 scaling solutions on Ethereum will immensely scale DeFi sectors.
“The most anticipated launches of these solutions are optimistic rollups which allow thousands of transactions to be bundled into a single rollup block,” the report says.
Meanwhile, stablecoin market capitalization reached $107 billion in Q2, up by 803% year over year and 70% since Q1. The digital assets facilitated $1.7 trillion in transactions throughout the quarter, representing an increase of 1,090% year over year and 59% since Q1.
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