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We can’t talk about EQIFI without first discussing decentralized finance (DeFi) and why in an economy still being ruffled by a global pandemic, more and more people are choosing to put their money on the blockchain instead of in a bank.
The thing with conventional banking is that it simply hasn’t caught up with 21st-century technology. For instance, simple things like getting a credit card or applying for a loan means having to establish your identity, prove that you have a stable source of income and a positive credit history—on paper (yes, even in the age of smartphones, we’re still cutting trees for this!) And more often than not, it’s the people who need such financial services the most who end up having such services denied to them simply because the bank has this ‘hunch’ that they can’t trust some people to be able to pay them back.
And in turn, it’s this one-sided relationship that makes it hard to trust banks. Because once your money is inside their vaults, it’s not really up to you anymore what happens to it. One has to learn how to interpret and navigate miles of bank policy and regulation that really only ensure that the bank profits first and foremost.
This is where the beauty of DeFi comes in—a trustless system wherein smart contracts execute transactions independently without needing someone like a bank manager to approve of it first. DeFi, simply put, aims to replicate traditional banking services minus the hassle of dealing with documents and bank personnel—or having to go to a physical bank in the first place.
In a DeFi space, trust doesn’t have to be generated through subjective profiling or establishing rapport between parties, which means you don’t even have to put your personal data out there for every transaction to do business—it’s the smart contracts that keep tabs on all parties involved. The smart contracts themselves are open source which means that anyone can view its protocols and make sure that it suits the best interests of every party involved.
Now let’s talk about EQIFI, because as appealing as DeFi is, the problem with being your own bank is that it has its own hassles too. One such problem is the seemingly insurmountable task of finding the most suitable platform or combination of them to meet their needs of convenience, profitability and security. Some platforms are suitable for trading, others are better at borrowing and lending, and others are really nifty secure wallets. Platforms also differ with the coins and tokens they support, and soon enough, just keeping track of it all—your email addresses, passwords, private keys, not to mention your money itself—becomes a curse of its own.
As a relatively new sector in the crypto space, DeFi still hasn’t held up to its promises yet. Many DeFi platforms are still centralized to some degree, with their smart contract protocols governed mainly by venture capital investors instead of their own users. Low liquidity is also an issue, as traders are spread out across numerous platforms and different blockchains resulting in slow transaction speeds (sometimes even slower than centralized ones).
But for every problem, there is a solution, and this is where EQIFI has the boldness to market itself as “your one-stop DeFi platform.” True, it’s a phrase that a simple Google search will confirm is all too casually thrown about these days among other up-and-coming DeFi projects, but nonetheless, let’s be objective and see what sets EQIFI ahead of the pack in its mission to gather all DeFi-related activity into one tidy platform heap.
EQIFI’s solutions to the DeFi problem
First, EQIFI is powered by EQIBank, which currently has services available in 180 countries worldwide and has been recognized as among the top ten digital banks to watch out for. As a digital bank, EQIBank is among the new breed of banks that exist entirely online.
But the main selling point is that EQIFI is a completely community-governed platform, with a single interface for banking, trading, and lending for both fiat and cryptocurrencies (ETH, ERC-20, wBTC, and Stablecoins). To address the issues with DeFi efficiency and speed as a result of low liquidity pools, EQIFI answers with four financial products that promise to be practical, profitable and fully integrated for that seamless banking experience.
Fixed Rate Lending — as with conventional banking practices, fixed rate lending on EQIFI benefits from stable interest rates. It avoids the risks that loan liability might increase or decrease over time due to market fluctuation, which cryptocurrencies, in particular, are notorious for.
Through smart contracts, lenders form a liquidity pool for various collateral: ETH, ERC-20, wBTC, and Stablecoins. The interest rates are set algorithmically with fungibility built in. After the fixed date, the smart contracts automatically settle the transaction; lenders earn their interest while borrowers get their collateral released upon payment of the loan.Variable Rate Lending — if the risks are acceptable however, borrowers can opt for variable rates or floating rate products which have a lower starting interest and which may even go lower when the market dips. From the lender’s side, this also has benefits with higher interest rates that adjust and reset periodically to follow the current market rate—allowing them to reap higher yields as the rates go higher.
One difference on EQIFI over traditional variable lending is the payment period. Whereas conventional banks pay interest every quarter, EQIFI pays more frequently depending on the investor’s preference—weekly, biweekly or even daily. Furthermore, because there are no middlemen, there are more guaranteed returns as the process is streamlined to respond in real time to changes with demand. As demand increases, this attracts more lenders to participate in liquidity pools. As more capital is made available for lending however, the demand goes down which then attracts more borrowers. The result is an extremely active, more equitable, inclusive and responsive market with more opportunities for profit.Interest Rate Swaps — the DeFi community has long been awaiting a platform that offers a scalable interest rate swap feature that bridges fixed interest rates and floating rates. Interest rate swaps happen when two parties agree to exchange future interest payments, usually a fixed rate for a variable rate as a hedging move against potential losses, or as a speculative move to anticipate greater profit. Interest rate swaps also keep the market more stable and protect against high volatility for variable lending rates as parties feel more at ease that they have an ‘out’ should things start to go awry.
Yield Aggregator — this is an automated feature that ensures you get the most from the best yield farming products available. Yield aggregators or “yield farms” generate rewards by putting up your tokens in liquidity pools for staking or borrowing. But instead of having to review, calculate and decide on all the potential risks and rewards over multiple platforms, you can have it all done automatically in an easy-to-use interface and let your tokens generate passive revenue with less user input.
Although other DeFi platforms such as Balancer (BAL), Curve DAO (CRV) and Compound (COMP) also carry out the primary function of having liquidity pools to facilitate token exchanges, the primary incentive for using these platforms is simply to earn rewards in the form of their respective native tokens. Furthermore, lending options on these platforms are only limited for a variable interest rate.
Whales have become an issue as well. As other conventional DeFi platforms were conceived of in a too straightforward manner, it has become too easy to create an artificial demand to drive interest rates up, and when other lenders take the bait thinking the market is doing well, the whales go on a selling spree leaving the pools high and dry.
EQX Benefits and Tokenomics
EQIFI uses its own native utility token EQX, and unlike other DeFi tokens previously mentioned, it has other means to drive interest up:
Holding EQX can earn up to 25% APL as well as passive returns.
Early adopters (the first 10,000 people) will get reward incentives.
Token holders with 800,000 EQX will have special community privileges such as being able to vote for future features on the platform like interest rates, collateral limits, tokens to be listed (or delisted), and even vote on administrators.
Priority access to EQIBANK accounts.
Higher limits on DeFi products.
Higher loan-to-value (LTV) ratio based on the amount of EQX held.
Earn interest based on the length of time (1,3, or 6 months) tokens are staked in liquidity pools.
Preferential rewards with staking EQX.
Reduced rates and better fees on trades and other services across the platform.
There is a maximum supply of 500,000,000 EQX which are allocated as follows:
Ecosystem — 100,000,000 (20%)
Liquidity mining — 100,000,000 (20%)
Sale — 250,000,000 (25%)
Reserve — 100,000,000 (20%)
Founders and Team — 50,000,000 (10%)
Advisors — 25,000,000 (5%)
The Founders
Jason Blick founded EQIBank in 2015 after seeing firsthand the need for the speed and convenience of digital banking but with a more accessible, user-friendly and personalized user experience. This followed his successful career as an attorney specializing in financial services where he oversaw over €1.5 billion per year in transactions in the technology and banking sectors.
Brad Yasar was an early adopter of Bitcoin and saw EQIBank as the logical bridge between DeFi and mainstream banking customers, opening up the future of digital banking to more than just the technologically literate. His prolific career as an entrepreneur, angel investor, advisor and public speaker established him as a fintech heavyweight.
Blick and Yasar’s fortuitous meeting led to the founding of EQIFI, a bridge between DeFi and a fully licensed global digital bank. With this partnership came a team of US, UK and European fintech experts, with experience gained from some of the world’s largest banks and successful blockchain projects.
Conclusion
With their range of products, hands down EQIFI clearly has a lot more to offer than other DeFi platforms. The goal of mass adoption for DeFi really seems to come through as the motive (over other up-and-coming platforms that seem to offer more hype than anything else). The thing is we can’t really give up what traditional centralized banking services do for us, but we do already have the means to make it as convenient and accessible for everyone—and not just for the privileged few. And with that, EQIFI seems to have its hand on the doorknob that could open up DeFi to a lot more people than just your typical “crypto-guy” friend.
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