Cathie Wood, the founder of asset management firm Ark Invest, hailed the sharp growth of decentralized finance vis-à-vis centralized finance on Tuesday, calling it a “financial services revolution.”
What Happened: The influential investor was responding to an X post by Lorenzo Valiente. Director of Research at Ark Invest, who highlighted “strong, secular trends” in DeFi.
Valente pointed out that despite market volatility and macro uncertainty, DeFi’s share in futures trading has grown from 1.6% to 7% since the fourth quarter of 2022, while its share in spot trading has surged from 7% to 20%.
Even more fascinating was the jump in DeFi’s share in lending, widening from 15% to over 60%. “DeFi isn't just surviving — it's scaling,” Valented said.
See Also: Bitcoin Braces For Trump Tariff Announcement: ‘Short-Term Optimism’ Has The Upper Hand, Experts Say
Why It Matters: Wood’s optimism comes at a time when DeFi is making significant strides in the financial sector.
According to DeFiLlama, the decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges recorded a volume of $6.82 billion in the last 24 hours, with Uniswap UNI/USD and Raydium RAY/USD being the main drivers. The DEX-to-CEX dominance was over 25%, indicating that decentralized exchanges logged a quarter of the volume compared to centralized exchanges.
Unlike CeFi, the traditional system that relies on banks and governments to control the flow of money, DeFi utilizes peer-to-peer blockchain technology to facilitate transactions, making it possible to avoid intermediaries.
Wood’s firm, Ark Invest, has been investing in cryptocurrencies, with its focus on the "Big Three," namely, Bitcoin BTC/USD, Ethereum ETH/USD, and Solana SOL/USD.
Photo Courtesy: viewimage on Shutterstock.com
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