The decentralized finance (DeFi) space has seen extreme growth this year, as evidenced by the $15 billion worth of capital now sitting in this space’s contracts.
Further, tokens pertaining to the DeFi space have seen extremely strong performances this past year.
Early venture investors in decentralized API protocol The Graph (GRT) are now up by over 100 times while other tokens like YFI, AAVE, and many more have surged thousands of percent in the past year alone in public markets.
On a fundamental level, the DeFi industry has seen stellar technological improvements as talent floods to this space at a rapid clip.
Unsurprisingly, this trend has caught the attention of prominent fund managers and investors inside and outside of crypto.
Naval throws weight behind DeFi yet again
Last week, a Twitter user asked his followers the best way to become successful in the current macro climate.
He specifically referenced how times have changed from before, where you could “show up in San Francisco, make a few good decisions and end up rich and successful in 5-10 years.”
Prominent angel investor and founder Naval Ravikant responded by highlighting that decentralized finance is likely one of the best frontiers to be in to truly become successful in the years ahead.
“Same as you always did – move to the frontier. The frontier is the place where the risk takers have arrived, but the masses and the bureaucrats have not. Today, that’s probably DeFi.”
This isn’t the first time that Ravikant, who has been following and promoting Bitcoin for years now, has talked about DeFi.
Months ago, he said that he thinks the innovations showing up in this space are “better than Wall Street”:
“They’re building a decentralized Wall Street, they call it DeFi, D-E-F-I, for decentralized finance. But I actually think it’s more like DEFY as, just defy the government, DEFY. And so I think, we’re seeing a whole new casino that’s better than Wall Street.”
He isn’t the only non-crypto-centric investor to begin focusing on decentralized finance.
a16z’s latest crypto fund has a focus on decentralized finance, calling it fundamentally similar to the principles that underlie the internet.
There has also been an influx of traditional funds and high net worth individuals looking to allocate capital to this space as DeFi begins to impact the bottom lines of funds and eventually, even Wall Street itself.
