Nfts
Did a single Trump NFT purchase change Washington’s mind on crypto?
Valentin Pletnev is far from the best-known name in cryptocurrencies, but a scheduling glitch that kept him out of Donald Trump’s recent Mar-a-Lago NFT gala could have significantly redirected US cryptocurrency policy.
Only select holders of Trump’s NFT collection were allowed to participate in the exclusive May event. Pletnev bought one tickets as soon as he learned about the rally – he won it by purchasing 100 Trump “Mugshot Edition” digital trading cards.
“I found it hilarious because I’m not American,” said Pletnev, German co-founder of Quasar Labs, which is building a decentralized finance protocol on the Cosmos blockchain, in an interview with CoinDesk.
Then the gala was moved to a time when Pletnev was unavailable, so he gave his ticket to Ryan Selkisfounder of crypto data and analytics platform Messari and a strong advocate of pro-crypto policy.
Selkis took the stage and touted the crypto revolution. Mihailo Bjelic from Polygon too.
Pletnev insists his NFT purchase – which let Selkis speak – played a key role in the events that followed: within days, a vocal contingent from the crypto and blockchain industry came forward. rallied around former President Trump, then US securities notoriously opposed to crypto. and Exchange Commission granted surprise approval to the first exchange-traded funds that own Ethereum’s ether (ETH).
After the gala, a widely distributed meme on digital. assets and traditional finance.
While some close to crypto policy say approval was likely no matter what, others see it as a capitulation by Joe Biden’s administration – proof that the crypto industry was finally being taken seriously by both parties as a political force.
Within two days of the SEC’s approval, the Republican-controlled House approved the industry-friendly plan. FIT21 invoice with significant Democratic support. He even won the support of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat who days earlier had expressed skepticism about the legislation.
“What else had to change [Schumer’s] “I think in five days,” Pletnev asked, otherwise “Ryan Selkis on stage with Trump, Trump saying ‘I’m pro-crypto, crypto needs to stay in this country,’ and all of Crypto Twitter realizes that ‘They could be part of Team Trump?’
Building on recent political hype, Pletnev is revealing a top-to-bottom rebrand for its Quasar protocol, geared toward simplifying investing in decentralized finance, or DeFi.
“Basically, crypto will only be a big success if we increase the number of beneficiaries compared to traditional finance,” Pletnev told CoinDesk. “If we fail to do this, we risk replacing the financial oligarchy with a technocracy, which would be a sad outcome.”
In the center of Pletnev “Performance for all” The vision will be the introduction of layered staking assets, or LSAs, which will combine yields from staking and DeFi into a single token that earns interest.
Staking is one of the most popular DeFi strategies today. This involves parking digital assets with a blockchain to help “secure” them in exchange for a constant flow of interest. Often, users stake assets and then reinvest them at the same time in other yield-generating DeFi platforms. Users can, for example, invest assets in a platform like Lido, “reinvest” them in EigenLayer through a platform like EtherFi, and then borrow against their stake to maximize their overall returns.
If this all sounds complicated, that’s because it is. Quasar aims to make things simple with its LSAs, assets that represent specific trading strategies and can be traded directly. Behind each LSA will be a basket of crypto assets that have been deployed on a variety of DeFi protocols. Assets can generate returns through these protocols and they will be managed according to investment strategies integrated into Quasar’s smart contracts.
“DeFi is complicated. If it continues to fragment, it becomes a full-time job,” Pletnev said. “We need to make DeFi work for people by presenting it in a simple, easy-to-use way.”
Quasar Finance launched its mainnet in 2023 as a “decentralized asset management” protocol based on the Cosmos blockchain ecosystem. The platform has used – and will continue to use – Cosmos’ Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, which facilitates interoperability between various blockchains.
Quasar’s approach is no different from existing yield protocols like Yearn – all-in-one trading platforms that simplify DeFi by deploying user funds into predefined trading strategies. The current Quasar protocol works the same way: users can deposit cryptocurrencies into “vaults” that follow certain trading strategies and do not require much active monitoring from users.
With its LSAs, Pletnev says Quasar is taking additional steps to add fungibility, decentralization and ease of access to the platform.
Despite the “yield for all” narrative, Quasar, like many DeFi protocols worried about violating US financial regulations, is not available in the US, hence Pletnev’s decision to get involved in US politics .
“I went to Draper University in the Bay Area, Tim Draper’s private school,” Pletnev said, referring to the Silicon Valley venture capitalist. “I wouldn’t be where I am without the United States. There’s no other way to put it.”
“The fact that people in this country can’t benefit from what’s out there because of their country is insane to me,” he said, “so I bought the [Trump] NFT because I thought someone should defend crypto.
Quasar Labs has raised a total of $11.5 million from investors including Polychain Capital, Blockchain Capital, HASH Capital, CIB and Shima. The latest funding round, revealed in January, valued the company at $70 million. The platform’s QSR governance token trades at $0.11 cents, with a fully diluted value of $67 million.