2018-11-5 22:19 |
Fortune recently decided to interview Robert Leshner, who just started a new company called Compound. During the interview, they spoke about the rising interest rates in the country, and how cryptocurrency’s experience has only been with a low interest rate in the economy. The new rates push the crypto market into an ecosystem that they have never thrived in before, though they have also never failed here.
Right now, based on research, the odds that the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates by 200-225 bps is 90%. The next meeting will not be until November 8th, but Leshner believes that the cryptocurrency market is in for a major hit. He said,
“We’re finally starting to enter an environment of rising interest rates which crypto has never seen before and it’s going to be potentially challenging to the price of a lot of crypto assets just like it will be for a lot of assets in general, including equities.”
When someone puts money into a bank, they have the ability to choose an account that can earn them interest. However, the concept of adapting the market to earn interest has never been introduced to the cryptocurrency market. In an effort to make this possible, Leshner established Compound.
Right now, Compound does not support Bitcoin, but there are four other tokens available. As they add more tokens, they are allowing users to contribute and voice their opinions on stable coins that they want to add.
With the new interest rates, Leshner sees this as the perfect opportunity for stablecoins to start breaking into the market, predicting that there will be close to 50 more of them added. Considering the many benefits that this offers consumers, it should not come as a shock that so many companies are working to become a part of the space.
Anyone that decides to purchase the stablecoins are basically just lending money to the companies that issue them without an interest fee. Considering that the users are basically charged for all of the transaction charges, banking institutions are much more appealing.
With Compound, the marketplace provides the option of being lent or borrowed at a cost. Hopefully, with the increased tokenization of currencies, more traders and arbitrages will hopefully become interested in using the website.
When he was asked about how Compound would benefit investors over forex markets, he simply replied,
“The advantage of tokenization is it brings transparency and programmability to currency. When dollars are open to blockchain there’s so much more innovation that can occur.”
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