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GSR Turns Up DeFi Activity in Strategic Shift
“We just see DeFi overtaking centralized exchanges as a preferred liquidity venue,” Jake Dwyer said.
By Danny Nelson
Updated May 11, 2023, 4:00 p.m. Published Nov 1, 2021, 4:01 p.m.
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Crypto market maker GSR is going big on decentralized finance (DeFi) after concluding that decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap will prevail over the firm’s centralized partners.
Head of DeFi Jake Dwyer told CoinDesk his unit is already moving $1 billion daily on Ethereum- and Solana-based DEXs. DeFi trades account for 20% of GSR’s daily activity; centralized exchanges, GSR’s historical focus, contribute the rest.
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Those shares are poised to flip in a hurry. GSR is plugging into more chains (Polygon, Avalanche, Celo and Arbitrum go online week) hiring more DeFi staffers and pouring $1 billion in total value locked to DeFi protocols.
In short, GSR, a long-serving crypto liquidity hub, wants its DeFi trading unit to “meet or exceed the capabilities that we have in centralized changes” by Q4 2022.
“We just see DeFi overtaking centralized exchanges as a preferred liquidity venue,” Dwyer said.
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