Research
Decentralized Finance (DeFi): A Primer for Professional Investors
San Francisco • November 16, 2021
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is one of the most exciting corners of crypto. The goal of DeFi is to create a more accessible, efficient, and transparent financial system by leveraging one of crypto’s greatest breakthroughs: programmable money. In this white paper, we put the DeFi movement into context, contrast it to the incumbent alternative, and explore how much market share the disruptive technology could capture. We find that if DeFi were to attain the same penetration relative to its incumbents that other successful disruptive technologies like e-commerce and electric vehicles have achieved (50-70%), it could become a $15 trillion industry over the next 5-15 years.
READ WHITE PAPERAbout Bitwise
Based in San Francisco, Bitwise is one of the largest and fastest-growing crypto asset managers, offering both index and active strategies across a wide array of investment vehicles. The firm is known for creating the world’s largest crypto index fund (OTCQX: BITW), a suite of crypto-focused equity and futures ETFs, and investment products that span Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, NFTs, and the Metaverse. Bitwise focuses on partnering with financial advisors and investment professionals to provide quality education and research. The team at Bitwise combines expertise in technology with decades of experience in traditional asset management and indexing, coming from firms including BlackRock, Blackstone, Meta, and Google, as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Bitwise is backed by leading institutional investors and asset management executives, and has been profiled in Institutional Investor, CNBC, Barron’s, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal.
