Zug, April 20, 2022 – Bitcoin Suisse today announced the start of its native Decentralized Finance (DeFi) offering. Select clients of Bitcoin Suisse can now lock the cryptocurrency Ether (ETH) as collateral in the decentralized borrowing protocol Liquity and mint their own Liquity Dollars (LUSD), the protocol’s stablecoin. More than USD 1 billion worth of ETH are already locked in the Liquity protocol. Bitcoin Suisse is the first crypto broker to provide a convenient gateway to the Liquity protocol for its clients.

The Liquity protocol enables its users to receive open-ended and interest-free credit in Liquity Dollars (LUSD), the system’s stablecoin, by locking their ETH as collateral in a smart contract. Bitcoin Suisse now offers its clients the possibility to tap into this innovative protocol, performing all smart contract interactions and system monitoring on their behalf. Clients can instruct Bitcoin Suisse to lock some of their ETH as collateral in the Liquity protocol and to mint a LUSD balance that can be exchanged into any desired fiat currency. The Liquity protocol is non-custodial, immutable, and governance-free, offering public transparency with regards to all outstanding balances and locked collateral.

Dr. Dirk Klee, CEO of Bitcoin Suisse, said: “With this latest addition to our service portfolio, we are taking a significant step towards decentralized solutions and offerings for our clients. Our DeFi service with the Liquity protocol marks a monumental milestone that makes us very proud. It delivers on the promise of DeFi to offer significant improvements over traditional financial services by being more open, more transparent, and more competitive. We are once again one of the first in this growing industry to institutionalize crypto assets, as a testament to our role as innovator and pioneer of the space.”

Robert Lauko, CEO of Liquity AG, stated: ”I am very excited about this new offering of Bitcoin Suisse as it provides a much broader audience access to Liquity’s unique value proposition in the DeFi space. It allows crypto users to finance their expenses without reducing their crypto holdings. And it is also an important milestone for DeFi: For the first time, a DeFi loan is paid out in real cash to non-DeFi-native customers who benefit from a strong legal position with no actual counterparty risk for the locked collateral.”

DeFi continues to be one of the fastest growing sectors in the crypto industry. The DeFi ecosystem is near its all-time high of USD 256 billion recorded on December 2, 2021, with currently over USD 210 billion in total value locked (TVL) across multiple blockchains and protocols.[1] At present, the offering is in a pilot stage and only available to a very small number of select Bitcoin Suisse clients with borrowing needs above USD 500’000.

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[1] https://defillama.com/

About Bitcoin Suisse

Founded in 2013, Bitcoin Suisse is the Swiss crypto-finance and technology pioneer and market leader. Bitcoin Suisse is an enabler for the crypto and blockchain ecosystem in Switzerland and has been a driving force in the development of the ‘Crypto Valley’ and ‘Crypto Nation Switzerland’. As a Swiss financial intermediary, Bitcoin Suisse offers prime brokerage, trading, custody, lending, staking and other crypto-financial services for private and institutional clients. Bitcoin Suisse has built a team of over 320 highly qualified experts at its locations in Zug, Copenhagen, and Vaduz. | bitcoinsuisse.com

For more details from Bitcoin Suisse Research, read our Fundamentals article “What is DeFi?” or our in-depth Decrypt episode “Collateral in DeFi”. If you are interested in a broader view, learn about the hype surrounding DeFi tokens in “Token Incentives in Decentralized Finance”.

About Liquity

Liquity is a decentralized borrowing protocol that offers interest-free loans (cash advances) against Ether. Since its launch in April 2021, the protocol has minted and managed autonomously more than 4 billion in LUSD, the protocol’s native stablecoin. The protocol has been developed by the Swiss founder Robert Lauko and a dedicated team of eight people. The development company Liquity AG is incorporated in the Crypto Valley in Zug and is backed by some major crypto VCs like Polychain Capital, Tomahawk.VC, Pantera Capital, and many others. Follow Liquity on their Website, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

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