EP015 – Meld DeFi Bank Loans & Grayscale Cardano
Episode by Peter Bui on July 6th, 2021
I chat with Ken Olling from Meld and their new decentralised finance platform that allows DeFi bank loans and lines of credit.
#DeFiJuly Decentralised Finance for the Month of July
This month I’ll be concentrating on interviewing, reviewing and generally learning more about decentralised finance (DeFi). It is a space that I generally missed out on during 2020 when DeFi became a thing and decentralised exchanges such as Uniswap became very popular and yield farming became a source of income for many.
I have lined up interviews with more decentralised exchange platforms such as ADAX, Mirqui, and Sundaeswap that are bringing new ideas and features to the Cardano ecosystem, Oracles services and wallets just to name a few.
You’ll find these interviews right here on the audio podcast and even more extra content on our YouTube channel.
Grayscale Cardano Buy In
Grayscale includes Cardano as one of their product offerings for their tradable trust fund product called Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund and has made Cardano it’s 3rd largest holding in this fund making up 4.26% of the overall fund.
Who is Grayscale?
Grayscale is the worlds largest digital asset investment firm in the world holding more than $40B in digital assets which now also includes Cardano.
Why is this big news?
Traditional investors that want exposure to the crypto markets but want the ease of what they have experienced in investing and want to continue investing the way that they always have without the need of setting up wallets, worrying about seed phrases and so forth. The traditional investor wants to just call up their broker and start investing, not having to worry about wallets, KYC or AML processes. Regular investors or speculators such as ourselves hold all the assets for ourselves and are completely responsible.
If we lose these, it’s our fault and we have no one to call upon. With the investment funds provided by Grayscale, they do all of this as a trust fund all managed by the fund managers.
Secondly, investing in a publicly traded trust fund allows for tax breaks in a tax friendly way whereas investing directly in Bitcoin doesn’t in many countries.
Thirdly, trading cryptocurrencies is very insular and you can’t trade crypto against Apple or Tesla shares. Listing it as a tradable trust fund allows for this and more flexibility in how investors can access markets.
It originally filed for the Cardano Trust in early 2021, which meant it was only a matter of time before it offered it as a product to its potential investors.
Cardano makes up 4.3% of the Grayscale digital large cap fund which holds $348.9M worth of crypto assets including:
Bitcoin 67.9% 0.00044916 BTC
Ethereum 24.9% 0.00263041 ETH
Cardano 4.3% 0.71064735 ADA
Bitcoin Cash 1.0% 0.00046156 BCH
Litecoin 1.0% 0.00160744 LTC
Chainlink 0.9% 0.01052955 LINK
This now makes it possible for traditional investors to get into Cardano via traditional stock market investment methods. As a result of the listing, there was a clear price increase as speculators are expecting even more movement in the markets as large investment funds start opening positions in the fund.
All of this coming in before the Alonzo hard fork and the introduction of smart contracts makes it a very bullish scenario for Cardano.
World Mobile Token Sale Launches
After a bit of a tricky KYC process to get on to the system, I finally managed to get into the long-awaited token sale for the World Mobile token sale.
Daedalus Flight 4.2.0 Released
A new version of the Daedalus Flight wallet has been released as a test with a few new features and fixes.
Native token improvements
New list view and search filter to make it easier to navigate a wallet with a large collection of tokens or NFTs.
Wallet Multi-signature public key
A new function for multi-wallet transactions has been added which enables the viewing of wallet multi-signature public keys used for shared wallets and multi-party transactions.
Sharing addresses
The issue of not being able to add notes when sharing receiving addresses as a PDF document has been resolved.
Sending native tokens using Trezor hardware wallets
The issue of failures when sending multiple native tokens using Trezor hardware wallets (when multiple native tokens with the same Policy ID were sent) has been resolved.
SundaeSwap merge with CardStarter
SundaeSwap, one of the first projects to announce the creation of a decentralised exchange on Cardano is merging with CardStarter, a decentralised accelerator.
Meld DeFi Bank Loans, Interview with Ken Olling
The video interview I did with Ken covers the idea and purpose of Meld, how it will work and how users will benefit from it.
The audio podcast talks more about his back story, venture into starting Meld and why he wanted to start it. I encourage you to watch the video and listen to the accompanying audio podcast to get a better understanding of what Meld is and the passion behind the project.
Check out the Meld project at:
Follow them on socials:
If you’re delegating to their pool, do not delegate to pool 4, ‘MELD4‘, as it is a fake pool created by a scammer trying to leverage the brand of the pool and steal delegations.
Hey Pete I would be interested in learning more about how amateur and new crypto investors, with not a lot to spend, can maximize their holdings. Or perhaps some of the “must do’s” and “certainly do not’s” of accumulating crypto. For those that got in early, clearly they were able to accumulate enough to play with it in DeFI, or stake it and see decent returns. For me, and others, we got in a bit late and certainly can’t throw heavy dollars at it. I’m wondering what the whales do to maximize their holdings. Should I be swapping for stable coins when the price is high, then swapping back into my alt coin when the price is low? I know you can’t and shouldn’t give financial advice, but perhaps the tricks of the space can be illuminated? Also, just as a side note, I’m obsessed with crypto and specifically Cardano, and want to be involved in the space some how. I participate in Catalyst, and catch all of the town halls, Cardano360s, most of the tech updates, Charle’s rants and AMAs, and I listen to all your’s and Cardano Live’s shows. I’ve even been motivated by the space to sharpen my python skills to make me better in my career (GIS Analyst). Maybe one day it will evolve into working on Cardano projects? Who knows, but I’m enthralled and want to be a part of this growth, and operate a pool. Just some thoughts, Sorry for ranting. Cheers!
Hey Gene,
I absolutely can not give you any financial advice in regards to how to or what to trade.
You’ll need to do a deep amount of research on every project that is launching right now and work out what is a real and legitimate project that may offer some returns. For that risk, there will hopefully be rewards or you could completely lose out.
If you’re involved with all of the Project Catalyst projects, it means that you have your eye peeled for a new and exciting project that might gather momentum and be the next big thing.
Sorry to be vague but I can’t give much more advice than that without being legally liable for such advice. Especially in a public forum.
I will produce some content in regards to using various platforms to buy and sell and some of the technical features on those platforms so that you can take advantage of them. They’ll come up in time as I get through the content schedule.