Crypto Firm Bullish Launches Pilot with Accelerating Defi Bets

Backed by several billionaires, the cryptocurrency project known as Bullish Global has initiated a private pilot of its highly-anticipated trading network, as interest in decentralized finance (DeFi) accelerates on Wall Street. On Tuesday, the company, which was valued recently at $9 billion, launched a seven-week pilot program for its platform, just before a full launch scheduled for later this year. Exploring the world of decentralized finance, Bullish is one of the most high-profile companies and it aims to eliminate the traditional intermediaries, such as lenders and exchanges that exist in the market, and allow buyers and sellers to connect directly.

DeFi has become one of the hottest trends in finance this year. One of the largest banks in the world, Goldman Sachs is also hoping to capitalize on this DeFi trend, as the institution filed an application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday for launching an exchange-traded fund (ETF). This ETF would focus on blockchain technology and digital assets and will track the profits of the companies operating in the market. Grayscale, which is the largest digital manager in the world, introduced a fund last week that’s tied to ten leading networks that are used in the space.

Decentralized finance, commonly referred to as DeFi, and is a marketplace where all aspects of a transaction are dealt with by computers and which eventually aims to eliminate intermediaries. It has experienced significant growth this year, as the values of trades executed in the market have exceeded $61 billion. This is a massive increase from the $15 billion that were executed at the start of the year. Uniswap is known as the largest platform for decentralized and automated trading and its volumes can surpass that of Coinbase, the crypto exchange that was listed at a value of $76 billion earlier this year.

The parent company of Bullish will also be going public in a listing in the stock market. The company has received the backing of a group of billionaires, which includes Richard Li, Michael Novogratz and Peter Thiel. The listing includes a merger and has boosted the project’s value to $9 billion, even though no trades have occurred as yet. Even though it is a decentralized network, Bullish stated that it was going to be a ‘regulated exchange’ that would integrate the best practices in compliance standards and cryptographic safeguards.

The platform is planned for a launch later this year, but the pilot program will run till September 13^th. Both retail and professional investors will pretend to trade in paper money and digital assets. A number of retail and professional traders will be invited by Bullish for testing out their system as part of the stimulation and cash prizes would be given out for participation. Bullish announced that three eligible participants would be given a total of $525,000 for competing in the paper trading games. Goldman Sachs stated in its ETF application that it would be investing in equities and other assets for replicating the profits generated by the largest companies in the DeFi space.