Key takeaways from Permissionless 2022
Insights • May 26, 2022 • 2 min read
Held in Palm Beach, Florida, the Permissionless conference brought together more than 5,000 attendees to examine how the Metaverse and DeFi are reshaping the global economy. Touted as an “event to connect the builders of the future,” we joined developers, investors, creators, and gamers to hear from leaders in the industry. Here are our key takeaways:
The traditional finance sector cannot overlook DeFi
Institutional investors, high wealth individuals, and Wall Street traders are unable to ignore continuous growth in the DeFi space. As DeFi networks continue to amass value locked in trading pairs that facilitate both transactions and yields, it remains to be seen how these mainstays of traditional finance will fit into this ecosystem.
DeFi Yield products are attractive to institutional investors but barriers to entry remain
While the barriers of regulation, investment framework directives, and client interest are diminishing, the recent collapse of the Terra/Luna stablecoin pair shed light on the volatile nature of these markets—perhaps offsetting the investment of large, sidelined institutions. However, despite this reckoning, blockchain-based networks, particularly Ethereum, are widely being perceived as the settlement layer of value on the internet, and there is a growing sentiment that to ignore the opportunity to own a stake in such a settlement layer would be foolish.
Retail investors have the advantage over traditional institutions in the current DeFi climate
As individuals who make the decisions about capital allocation become educated in the ways of the burgeoning digital economy, it is likely we will see the evolution of products and services that test the fitness for digital assets in the wider realm of institutional investment. Because this is likely to take time, retail investors with access to Web3 wallet services and decentralized exchanges have a rare window to front run the institutions, by taking market positions before wide scale institutional capital infusion occurs.