San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has invested 1.1 million USDC into decentralized finance protocols Uniswap and PoolTogether.
According to an announcement published by the company, the funds came from its USDC Bootstrap Fund, which was created last September with $2 million of initial funding. The move came in a bid to encourage USDC growth in decentralized finance (DeFi).
With the USDC investment, Coinbase added $1 million of liquidity to Uniswap’s USDC/ETH pool. Uniswap is a decentralized exchange on the Ethereum blockchain that doesn’t have order books, but instead sees users trade against its reserves. Coinbase noted Uniswap’s liquidity has grown to $31 million in little over a year, adding it now has pool for over 880 tokens. The announcement reads:
Their constant market maker model makes it easy to launch a liquid exchange for any token, and is increasingly becoming critical infrastructure for tokens and applications that need liquidity.
PoolTogether is a no-loss lottery that gives users a chance to win for savings their funds with its smart contract. The PoolTogether savings game is built on Compound, and uses the interest earned from the deposits to pay out random winners.
Coinbase’s investment in PoolTogether added 100,000 USDC tokens to the pool to help increase rewards for depositors. At the end of the announcement, Coinbase encouraged developers and smart contract projects that want to integrate USDC to apply for the USDC Bootstrap Fund.
The fund has in the past invested in money market protocol Compound and margin trading platform dYdX. These new investments come shortly after Coinbase Wallet made it easier for its users to earn interest via decentralized finance platforms.
Featured image via Pixabay.
