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Hedge Fund Strategies Are Coming Onchain - Yield Talks
Recorded: June 20, 2025 Duration: 0:46:58Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent Yield Talks podcast, Rhett Ship of Avant discussed the launch of innovative yield-bearing tokens like AVUSD and SaveUSD, which offer competitive APYs and reflect a growing trend in DeFi towards simplified, efficient asset management. The conversation highlighted the increasing interest from traditional finance in DeFi yields, signaling a shift in investment strategies among institutional players.
Full Transcription
Music Thank you. hmm Hmm. Thank you. Okay. Hey Rhett, hey Nomadic, see if you can unmute yourselves.
Let's just do a quick sound check.
Hey, can you guys hear me?
Yep, you sound great. And Rh Hey, can you guys hear me? Yep, you sound great.
And Rhett, can you hear us okay?
Oh, I think he's still a listener.
I don't know if he's a speaker yet.
Yeah, I was having some issues here starting the space.
So maybe space is having some tech problems today.
I can see you and Rhett are listed as speakers.
And I think that Stable Scarab just gave a thumbs up that he's hearing us.
So yeah, we'll see if Rhett...
And then Rhett, so we can see you.
You've joined.
You're currently muted and unmuted, but we couldn't hear anything.
If you want, you could go ahead and just hop off and then rejoin.
And then anyone that's joining us, just we'll get started here in just a few minutes. So give us maybe like two minutes or so here and we'll get us kicked off.
Oh, there's Rhett.
I'm going to invite him to speak.
Nomadic, I am, I'm definitely like getting, getting ready to uh to abandon spaces just all together
we just do it all on riverside there we go hey russ hey ross there you go yeah double issues for
some reason x wouldn't even show me the space at first and then i joined and couldn't speak
so sorry about that no no no we we we run into issues almost every week i was just saying i i'm
about ready to abandon
spaces and just record it on Riverside and keep it all simple. But yeah, as long as you guys can
still hear me okay, I think we can go ahead and get started here. Yeah, so I'll kick us off. So
hey, everyone, I'm DeFi Dad. Thanks for joining us. This is Yield Talks on the Edge podcast.
Every Friday, we host a live space to review new and interesting DeFi to spotlight what we believe
is an on-chain opportunity more of you should know about. So today we're joined by Avant co-founder
Rett Ship. Avant launched in January 2025, offering stable value tokens backed by USDC, which is the product is known as AV or AVUSD.
And then there's a staked yield bearing version called SaveUSD.
And the yield for SaveUSD is powered by these expertly managed cross-chain, on-chain strategies.
So if you hold SaveUSD, it currently earns about 10% APY.
But the team isn't just focused on dollar-peg stablecoin strategies. They recently introduced
AVBTC, a Bitcoin-backed token, which has a staked yield-bearing version called SaveBTC,
which is earning 3.83% APY as of this recording. So we're excited about both of these yield
offerings. They represent a new trend in hedge fund-like strategies coming on chain,
but they're available to anyone through permissionless yield-bearing tokens. So
Rhett, excited to have you. Maybe you could
kick off with just a little bit more about your background building in DeFi, and then we can get
into Avant and more broadly about the future of yield-bearing assets on-chain.
Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks. And I think you pronounced the assets great. I tend to call them SaveUSD and SaveBTC and then AVUSD and AVBTC,
but whatever you want to call it, it's fine with me.
And, yeah, so you were asking what my background is.
I think I guess I can give you a longer distance background if you want.
I started my career in econ consulting and then was a data scientist for a long time before getting too obsessed with DeFi to stay away.
And when I kind of first entered the space, I went and worked at a crypto asset manager doing all things DeFi, yield generation, DeFi as a service.
So we had clients that were borrowing against their ETH on BlockFi to buy
homes. And I helped kind of roll them into DeFi loans instead, just have a lot better properties,
in my opinion. So did a lot of that. And yeah, I've been building Avant for a little while now.
And we love yield. I've always loved yield. That's always been a big part of my interest in DeFi.
And so, yeah, that's really what we're focused on now.
And then, you know, for those interested, AVUSD and AVBTC won't be the only yield bearing assets we have.
won't be the only yield bearing assets we have. I think a lot of the majors, especially ETH,
have great yield strategies you can run. So you'll see other AVA assets coming later on.
So yeah, what did I miss? DeFi, Dad? No, I think you covered it. And by the way,
we're going to talk more specifically about Avant today.
Part of the reason we wanted to have you on is I think you have a lot of experience with other yield-bearing assets. I think that yield-bearing assets started as simple,
hard-coded strategies. And I think they've evolved to become a vehicle that offers exposure to all sorts of
different, more advanced strategies. And really, I think, you know, on-chain, we're seeing
competition play out. So anyways, we want to get more of your insights there. I guess,
who do you see on-chain as key customers today for yield-bearing assets?
And then maybe where do you see the next big opportunity for growth in terms of yield-bearing assets?
Yeah, from a customer standpoint, I feel like anyone who holds stablecoins or even holds off-chain dollars is a natural customer for yield bearing stables or yield bearing on chain dollars,
whatever you want to call them. So that's, I think, most of us here, treasuries.
I think a lot of traditional institutionals are finally getting a little bit more interested.
And I think there's going to be a lot more of that. And then, you know, my view is, you know,
making use of DeFi to make all of your assets more productive
makes a lot of sense.
You know, if you're sitting on Bitcoin, ETH, et cetera,
being able to park some of that in a yield generating version
to me is a really good fit for anyone just holding
those assets. So I think just like, I mean, in the traditional world, most people who
hold dollars want to hold it in yield bearing form if possible. So most people I know keep
their checking and savings account relatively small and then either invest the rest or at
least park
it in things like money market funds. So I think it's kind of a similar dynamic here. So I see,
yeah, this area of DeFi growing pretty substantially.
Rhett, maybe we can kind of take a step back here too. And I mean, if you came into the space a few
years ago, there wasn't a ton going on in the stablecoin space, but there's just been like an
explosion of different yield bearing stablecoin opportunities. So can you kind of like categorize
like the way you see the landscape? Like, you know, we've got the payment stable coins and then we've got this whole new flavor of stable coins coming now.
I think maybe credit to Athena.
But yeah, how do you kind of like categorize the landscape right now?
Yeah, good question.
I think I caught most of the question.
So the question, for some reason, space is kind of crashed for me again.
For some reason, space is kind of crashed for me again.
So I exited and re-entered, but mostly like, how do we,
So I exited and reentered.
how do I see the different kind of stable coins and yield bearing versions?
Yeah. So I think there's a couple of OGs that are just, you know, USDC,
USDT, just straight up stable is usually without yield.
Although there's pretty good places to earn yield on those as well.
Especially in these
and there's some really good lending yields on both USDC and UCT and places like Morpho and
Euler lately other places too but especially those I'm seeing a lot the two other I guess
the three other big places that you know or categories that i see are um just the rwa backed um i remember
it's funny talking about this years ago of like man it'd be interesting to see like a decomposed
um tether is what i used to call it where you know still backed by treasuries or whatever but you
can actually get that yield passed through or maybe I just get the treasury and then mint a stable, like a CDP-based stable based on it so that I'm capturing the
yield because I own the collateral.
Now there's tons of those.
So that's, I think, one of the biggest newer categories.
There's a lot of players there.
So some of the players there that I think are you know worth paying attention to
would be like ondo elixir securitize is like one step before that so you have like sbiddle that
you can get but then you can go you know mint de usd from it um. I think Mountain is interesting. There's probably some others that I'm missing
there. So, oh, Usual. Usual money is treasury backed as well. So that's a big one. I think,
by the way, I think it's really nice to have that style in the market alongside the Athena style because they perform very
differently in different markets. So it's really helpful to have kind of both options at all times.
So then so there's the RWA backed stables, treasury backed mostly.
I'm starting to see a few more that are other types of rwas just had a call yesterday
with someone who theirs will be basically gold backed um uh adult goldback dollar stable there's
a some interesting um stuff there um and then the two i'd say'd say maybe like two or three other categories.
One is, I guess it's a category into itself, just straight up like carry trade stables.
I think of the carry trade as like the most prominent like hedge fund style strategy, though I don't consider like Athena a hedge fund.
But that one's probably an entire category
into itself now um so carry trade staples would be one and then you know there's still some life
in the cdp model so you have um you know maker dow's cdp back stable Some of theirs is it's not all CDP, but Liquidy V2 and its forks just launched.
And there's some interesting stuff there and some nice yield there. It's a very different yield
source. It's all from borrowers paying interest rates. And that kind of competitive user set
interest rate model, I think will
end up resulting in pretty interesting sticky yields.
The other nice thing about if you participate in like the bold forks, the liquid V2 forks
via the stability pool is you have this interesting dynamic where the yield can really spike during market meltdowns because
you're capturing returns from liquidations so it's this really interesting way to
you know you get like maybe decent base yield and then when markets are crashing
your yield actually goes up so that's kind of a unique property of those ones
actually goes up. So that's kind of a unique property of those ones. And then, you know,
the category that we're in is if you take Athena as a base and you say, OK, well,
it's going to run a diversified mix of yield generating strategies that like our, our partner strategists put on, but it's not held
just to the carry trade. So it's, you know, a little bit more adaptive and ours is all DeFi
based. So I don't know if you'd call it better or worse. I think you just call it like a different
risk profile than Athena, where they're more exposed to centralized exchanges, we're more exposed to decentralized like DeFi platforms. That's maybe like,
I'd call it like a newer model. And just as like a quick example, and this maybe will give us a
chance to for me to not just talk about avant too much but the way that if you look
at the underlying strategies for avusd um in hot markets um a lot of it is carry trade a lot like
athena um and then as markets cool off it tends to move into other trades there's a lot of that
that goes into like there's some cdp style
stables that have had really good liquidity pools the last few months um just like curve style
liquidity pools there's a lot of really interesting things happening on pendle yield trading and some
of that ends up you know the the source of yield there's you know partially like you know you're
selling off point speculation but then there's also some underlying yield a lot of yield there's partially like you're selling off point speculation, but then there's
also some underlying yield. A lot of times it's been lately coming from essentially like treasury
yield, but some other things as well. So I don't know. I don't know if that's a good categorization.
What do you guys think? Am I missing categories? What do you guys think?
No, I like the way you're breaking it
down. I mean, there's a lot of ways to slice and dice the different types of yield bearing assets.
I think if you go back to the basics for a moment, and this is something that I think
maybe we don't appreciate as much, but when you're coming from TradFi, you're like, hold on a sec.
when you're coming from TradFi, you're like, hold on a sec. You're telling me that I can get
access to different yields, but then I am able to maintain my liquidity and I can go put that
to use elsewhere, like whether I'm going to use it as collateral or whether I use it in an LP.
There's a lot of capital efficiency there that is just exciting to be able to access.
there that is just exciting to be able to access. Unfortunately, when you're catering to
long-time DeFi users, they're like, okay, yeah, and what else can you do for me? And then what
other yields can you compound into that? But right now, there's a huge appetite to be able to earn
stablecoin-denominated yields, like stablecoins that are pegged to the US dollar. And then
the other one that we'll get to here is being able to earn a yield that is denominated in Bitcoin.
You know, like there aren't a lot of great yields out there in Bitcoin. If you can earn 1%
real yield in Bitcoin, that is incredible right now. There's just not a lot out there available. So
anyways, this is part of, I think, what you all have been building towards here. So why don't we
get into how does something like AVUSD and SaveUSD work? I want to talk also about like what's going on that enables you to earn something like a 10% APY yield for SaveUSD holders.
So anyways, just walk us through the product, AVUSD versus SaveUSD.
Awesome. Yeah, will do.
By the way, backing up really quickly to the previous topic for a second. One other, I don't know how you categorize this, but just, you know, an interesting call out is I think syrup slash maple is another kind of,
you might call that like indirect hedge fund yield because it's, you know, it's lending mostly to
hedge funds and market makers and things that are really good yields. So that's an interesting model.
We like them as well.
But yeah, a little bit on how the AV assets work.
So AVUSD is minted from USDC one to one.
So deposit USDC, you get one AVUSD back.
And then that USDC is allocated to one of our partner strategists that puts on a diversified basket of market neutral strategies.
And like I said, the strategy mix can shift quite a bit. where you use some DeFi to generate some yield on the long leg of, say, ETH, and then open
up a short perps position on Hyperliquid.
So that's like a typical carry trade.
So that's a trade you'll see more in that basket.
So the USDC would convert into a mix of ETH and ETH short positions.
You see that more in hotter markets.
It may go into like a pendule position and maybe even doing some collateralized borrowing
on that pendule position on Aave, Morpho, Euler, et cetera.
Those are kind of the big three lately for Pendle PTs.
And so yeah, your USDC that went to MintAveUSD
goes into this basket of strategies.
And then if you stake your A AVUSD into SaveUSD,
then you're sharing in that yield.
The way the yield works is it gets distributed every day.
So you'll just see the SaveUSD value accrue every day
relative to AVUSD.
And then once a week, the strategy nav is updated
and the yields will switch over. So you're basically, what you'll see is like last week's
yield getting distributed over the course of a week, and then every Thursday kind of Epoch flips over.
So on Thursdays, you'll see the strategy yields shift based on what the returns of the previous
week were.
And then if you want to exit, if you click on stake on your save USD, you wait a period of time that you're not accruing yield for that
period of time. And then at the end of the period, you can claim the underlying AVE USD.
And then once you've claimed that, you can go burn it back in USDC. Normally, the unstake period
has been a week. But for the last few weeks, we've been allowing one day on stakes. We may or may
not leave it that short. There's some trade offs there. But we we just want our users to have
really low friction getting in and out of that staking yield. So so yeah, once you're staked,
if you decide you want to leave, you can either swap out, there's pretty good dex liquidity right now, or you can unstake, wait a day, claim the AVUSD, and then redeem it.
Hey, Rhett, I just want to reiterate something here.
So, the way I'm kind of envisioning Avant is
you're almost becoming this like capital allocator for DeFi. You have the ability to go out and I
guess deploy into what you deem the best risk adjusted yields throughout DeFi and then revert
those yields back to this like, I don't think you specifically call it a stable coin,
but back to this save USD. Am I kind of thinking about that correctly?
Yeah, that's right. So the way I've, yeah, yeah, that's really solid. And because the strategy
adapts to at least what we think are the best risk adjusted yields
i think it lends itself a little bit more to you know stake and chill for those who don't want to
be you know really actively chasing yields themselves um you guys have probably experienced
some of what i have experienced but it's interesting talking to a lot of my friends
who have been doing yield things in defy since the beginning, you know, clear back to DeFi summer.
Most of them who aren't like professionally like employed in the space eventually burned out. And
they're like, I can't just keep chasing yield all the time. And like, you know, one strategy dies
and another comes in and just kind of following all those is like, it's a lot of work.
It's kind of a full time job. And so I guess partly also why sometimes you see a lot of assets sitting in some, you know, not very competitive, maybe curve pool or something, because maybe some people eventually burned out and stopped like moving their assets to the best opportunities.
So the thought here is, you know, the strategy itself will kind of reallocate over time based
on which strategies are the most productive on a risk adjusted basis.
productive on a risk-adjusted basis.
And then users can just hold that asset
and get a pretty optimized yield
without having to move between vaults or pools all the time.
So Rhett, I'm looking at the Avant Protocol app.
If you go to app.avantprotocol.com slash metrics, you can see the growth and supply of AVUSD.
You can also track the historic APY for AVUSD, or I guess ultimately the staked version.
Can you remind us, like, how much more capital could you onboard?
You remind us, like, how much more capital could you onboard?
How much more AVUSD could you mint or grow the supply and maintain this competitive yield?
You know, I'm going to say, like, I don't know, 7% to 10% is pretty competitive right now.
But yeah, do you have any, like, upper limits right now? And I guess like, what do you do as, as the supply of AVUSD grows and you
continue to have to like earn that competitive rate for holders? Yeah. I mean, given that we
are all, you know, it's a hundred percent DeFi, we are, you know, gated by the size of DeFi,
right? So what's, what's, what's DeFi at like right now, like 100 and maybe 120 billion
or something in TVO? We obviously couldn't have 300 billion tomorrow and have much to do with it,
you know, unless we started doing things outside of DeFi. So that's obviously like a limiting factor.
And so that's obviously like a limiting factor.
But within like reasonable scale, we actually think that DeFi has matured a lot the last few years and there's a lot more scalability than people realize.
And so if our TVL, you know, doubled this week, we don't think that we would have any shortage of opportunities.
We don't think that we would have any shortage of opportunities.
Even up into the billions, we think that the opportunities for really competitive DeFi-based yield is plentiful.
The other factor here, as far as maintaining really competitive yields that are scalable,
you get a lot more room to run in strong bull markets because the
carry trade can become really profitable and really scalable.
So if we kicked off another 2020, 2021 era, like really strong bull run, then that gives
you even a lot more room.
But we aren't in, you know, Avant isn't really in strategies that are like,
we'll just say we have no shortage of strategies.
And we don't think that the yield would have major compression, even into the nine or 10 figures.
At some point, you do get some compression, right?
So if you look at like maybe the gap in yield here versus some of the other leading stables, if we approach the size of Athena, the yield diff between Avon and Athena would definitely shrink.
the yield diff between Avant and Athena would definitely shrink.
yeah, so
and look, market conditions and then, you know, reassessing as we get bigger,
but definitely into the nine figures, the current like set of strategies
would have no issue scaling at all.
Hey, Rhett.
So whenever I see something like this,
like I'm always taken by like the kind of like experimental nature of it.
It's novel.
Love to see this happening in DeFi, really.
But my mind always goes to like, okay, what are the risks here?
So maybe walk us through how things are custody, like how users can can trust the operation here, because I think like maybe there's some pressure to, you know, always be chasing.
I know the risk adjusted yields, but you want to stand out. So, yeah, maybe just tell us what you're doing on the security side to make sure people's assets are safe.
Yeah, that's a really good question.
So there's a lot of layers here.
So obviously our own contracts are multi-audited, but frankly, the Avant contracts are pretty simple.
You know, minting, staking, unstaking, burning, like these are not like super complex contracts.
That's not where we think like the biggest risks here lie. Well, you know, minting, staking, unstaking, burning like these are not like super complex contracts.
That's not where we think like the biggest risks here lie.
The biggest risks by far are that, you know, we have assets deployed in a strategy and that that platform gets exploited.
And so that's the biggest risk. And then the other risk that I also deem like more important for us, for people to think
about with us than than like our own smart contracts is, yeah, like operational security.
So let me let me kind of talk you through both of those a little bit.
So on the DeFi exposures side of things, so there's a few things we do to
mitigate risk there. One, we deeply vet every protocol along with our strategists. So we're
reviewing their smart contracts, their time in the market, their level of TVL. And we're vetting the tokens, the DeFi platforms and the chains themselves, as far as from a risk perspective.
And then we, a lot of, you know, there's a lot of things that we just won't let into the strategy.
And then when we do, we also size it based on risk. So
something like really Lindy and large like Aave is going to be considered a lot lower risk than
say a brand new or even like a three-month-old DeFi project. So there's just risk vetting there.
And then diversification is really important as well here, where we have between 10 and 20 strategies running at any given time.
So the idea here is that if you do experience an exploit, that a huge percentage of the funds aren't caught in that.
in that. So diversification is a key piece. We use hypernative for real-time monitoring of all
So diversification is a key piece.
of our positions and the token prices, et cetera. So that if there is an exploit,
ideally we can react to it quickly enough to mitigate damage as well.
And then we have a reserve fund and a treasury that we also will use
to backstop losses if those are needed. So far, they haven't been needed. But the goal
here is to continue to grow that reserve fund over time for if there's strategy losses just due to bad trades or if there are losses due to an exploit, it would cover that.
On that reserve fund side of things, we're actively exploring on-chain insurance as well.
It would come before the reserve fund.
It has to be priced appropriately.
We're exploring that with a couple of providers. And then we are soon launching a junior tranche
that will be out, you know, in a few weeks, we'll say less than a month. So people can opt into getting, you know, higher yield,
but also help participate in backstopping others. So that's on that side of things. And then as far
as like, where the assets are held and operational security, etc. That's a really important piece.
So when someone meant save USD, those assets enter kind of a custody environment where the traders are able to put on these trades.
We're using Fireblocks and Fortify both at the moment.
And then traders have segregated laptops.
There's a lot that we do from an operational security standpoint.
We actually, we have an ongoing security audit with Trail of Bits, which is, it's not a smart contract audit.
of our operational security and even physical security
to just make sure that we're as cautious there
as we possibly can be.
And so that's a really important thing to us.
And actually, as far as like marginal spend
of the Avant funds, almost like marginal spend of the Avant, you know, funds, almost all marginal spend over the next
few years, we'll just go to additional security. So that's something that we're, you know,
we really spend a huge portion of our devs time and resources and, you know, audit spend on that side of things.
And that'll continue probably forever.
So yeah, the, you know, the USDC used to mint AVE USD basically hits a fire blocks.
And then it's inside that environment that our partner strategists are able to put on trades
one thing to note about the strategists themselves is they are made approved
traders within like a subset of that environment and and then if we ever decided hey this strategist
we need to kind of fire and we're hiring someone else they don't have a way of holding funds hostage.
We just would remove them from that environment and reallocate.
So tell me what I missed there.
What other questions you have on that piece?
No, I think that was really thorough.
I want to shift gears and talk about save BTC. So what can you tell us about the Bitcoin pegged AVBTC versus the yield bearing asset save BTC?
um avbtc from uh currently from btc.b btc.b is this like avalanche native bitcoin that's that's
directly minted from native bitcoin uh so that's what it's minted from and then again that btcb
goes into bitcoin neutral yield generating strategies um and so if you stake it into save btc
And so if you stake it into save BTC, one save BTC will accrue more and more AV BTC over time.
And then later when you come back and want to burn it into BTC, you'd have this accrued value.
So it is basically Bitcoin denominated and it's earning Bitcoin denominated yield.
And then that yield just accrues similar to like any kind of 4626 vault you'll see.
That product's a lot newer.
It's only been out for about four weeks.
Still just kind of building track record there
and optimizing those strategies.
Yeah, what other questions do you have on the Bitcoin side?
Are you interested to know kind of what sorts of strategies are being run these days?
Actually, yeah, that'd be good. Maybe, Rhett, what's like your favorite type of strategy, maybe in general, at Avant to generate yield from?
depends on market condition for sure. One thing to note, we, you know, points and things like
that are great, but points and like future airdrop expectations, things like that are
never counted in our yield. We don't count any yield until it's realized. And so we do
prioritize real yielding things. So if there's some deposit vault that has some, you know, future airdrop, it's not that we won't participate in those necessarily, but we discount, you know, future airdrops and things like that a lot.
And we don't count any of that yield until it's realized.
Just to know.
And then depending on which strategies we like the most depends on market conditions.
And then depending on which strategies we like the most depends on market conditions.
So hot markets, any carry trade or modified carry trade is really nice.
In markets like this, we love doing kind of points trading stuff on Pendle.
That's where a lot of things happen.
With Bitcoin, the yields on Bitcoin have kind of um yeah they vary
quite a bit and right now what we found is a lot of times the best bitcoin yields end up being
using bitcoin as collateral to run uh more like dollar based strategies that's not always been
the case um sometimes you can get really good Bitcoin on Bitcoin.
And I think we'll probably see more of that in the future.
Like one of these chains that just went live,
or I think it goes live next week, actually, Botanics,
is this EVM Bitcoin L2.
And if you hold their staked Bitcoin,
gas fees are paid in the form of Bitcoin.
And then, you know, liquid stakers get that Bitcoin yield.
So if that chain gets a lot of activity, then you could have a lot of just native Bitcoin
yield there that's coming from gas fees.
So that's one to just like, I think, pay attention to.
There's some others that are similar.
You see something similar on Stacks, but that's going to be really dependent on economic activity,
I think.
So yeah, right at this moment, the best Bitcoin yields are, like I said,
Bitcoin collateralized dollar strategies for the most part.
Rhett, oh, sorry there, guys. I couldn't unmute myself. Rhett, what can you tell us about the appetite for DeFi yields through the lens of a bond that's coming from traditional finance?
Yeah, good question. We've had some conversations with people in that space, and I think there definitely is growing interest.
I think DeFi is still not the best understood part of crypto. So like I think just getting access to Bitcoin and now a few other assets like Ethan sold through like these treasury companies and things still seems like it's like the biggest thing that TreadFi people are thinking about.
But we've spoken to some that definitely want access to, you know, DeFi based yields.
that definitely want access to DeFi-based yields.
And so there is definitely growing interest there.
I think right now, most of the interest in that sort of thing,
because it's...
Sorry, can you still hear me?
We can hear you now.
You said something like that sort of thing, and then you started to cut out.
So if you can recall what you were saying there.
No, you're okay.
Yeah, so the DeFi-based yield interest is strongest in – like in TradFi, what I'm finding is that the group that's most interested in things like DeFi-based yield are like family offices, hedge funds, those sorts of people who are already the type to be on the cutting edge a little bit.
I think that'll probably remain the case for a while.
Um, I, I think the other entry point that some of those guys will have is as we can tokenize some of the assets that they're already playing in and then give them access to say, um, tap into, you know, leverage and things like that, uh, from DeFi on, I don't know if they're already running a strategy on some, um, bond or private credit, you know, instrument or equities
or whatever. I think there's going to be some interest there. But yeah, my view is there are
traditional, you know, TradFi people that are now taking interest in this, but the education level
is still low. So a lot are just learning about it. And then those who are putting their dipping their feet in are more like family offices and hedge funds. That's what I'm seeing.
Yeah, we have been covering this on the podcast and just seeing lots and lots of protocols spring
up that are catering specifically to like, bigger institutional type investors that want DeFi yields. And I think what's been most interesting is there's a common thread, whether they're an
institutional investor or whether we're talking about retail investors, they do want these
like simple one-click type opportunities, basically get into a yield bearing asset,
to a yield bearing asset like save BTC or save USD. And it's just interesting to me because,
like save BTC or save USD.
again, I think for those of us who haven't managed hundreds of millions or billions of dollars,
it is striking that there is so much appetite out there to get the simplified yields. They don't
want the complexity. They don't want to have to manage
all of this on-chain. And so what's going to bring that much more money on-chain is access
to the types of yields I think you guys are offering. Yeah, I think that's right. I think
these traditional funds definitely don't want to be in there clicking buttons and moving money
between LPs and things like that. That'll probably almost never be a thing for most of those guys, at least not for a long time.
So yeah, being able to package something up, I think I agree with you.
Well, Rhett, I think this is a good place for us to start to wrap up.
So for our listeners, I want to remind you,
you should check out Avant at avantprotocol.com.
Follow Avant Protocol on X.
Follow RETSHIP.
It's R-H-E-T-T-S-H-I-P-P on X.
We'll put that into the show notes
so you can easily reference it.
If you join the live space,
thank you so much for joining us.
We love to do these on a Friday.
It's nice just to have a casual live conversation
with builders like this.
That said, we do edit the podcast
and we'll republish it
through our regular Apple and Spotify channels.
So if you go to the-edge.xyz,
that's the best place to get real-time notifications about new podcasts like Yield Talks.
I also want to remind you, Nomadic wrote a fantastic post just published today.
If you're an ETH bull, it's about Sharplink, which is similar to a Bitcoin treasury company, but instead it's an ETH treasury company.
And so anyways, he does a bunch of analysis just to talk about why it's interesting to see
a publicly traded company leaning into ETH as a treasury asset and all that they can do with
staking and DeFi strategy. So anyways, I read it.
Really, I contributed a bit to it,
but most of it comes from Nomadic.
And I feel like I learned so much.
And so just a reminder,
like all that content is free
if you go to the-edge.xyz.
That said-
Real quick, Stable Scarab's in the audience
listening to this too.
He was, uh, uh, like a great contributor to that piece as well.
So yeah, shout out stable scarab and, and thanks for all your help, man.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Um, also to just a call for future posts.
If you are a talented writer or just have an interesting idea, you want to get amplified out there.
Like we're so grateful for folks like Stable Scarab to, you know, write a guest post or
if you want to collaborate with Nomadic or me on a post, like just let us know. But yeah,
anyways, it is a fantastic post. So thank you, Stable Scarab. Thank you, Nomadic.
That all said, Rhett, thanks so much for joining us.
Any final word for us before we go?
Thanks for having me.
I think this is one of the best.
I love the yield talks.
And so, yeah, I appreciated you letting me join you.
And then happy Friday, everyone.
Have a great weekend.
Like I said, please join us next week. I think we'll be hosting one next Friday per usual.
And yeah, I hope everyone's bags go up over the weekend.
So yeah, have a great one.
Thanks, everyone.
