Part 1: $56 billions
Who are the Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google of crypto?
Crypto is (in)famous for its rollercoaster image to the masses. But what if we can find projects that:
generate revenue and earnings
hold clear market leadership
have clear advantages over competitors
This would put crypto projects in the same valuation framework that the Wall Street uses for the FAANG stocks of Nasdaq.
I wrote about the 5 FAANG names spanning across 5 different crypto verticals in my recent LinkedIn post here.
For C.A.C. Issue #14, I will walk you through Maker, one of the crypto FAANG, by its numbers. Let's dig in.
What is Maker?
Maker is one of the earliest projects to tackle the stablecoin market in crypto. Out of the 5 FAANG companies, Maker has been around the longest.
You can think of stablecoin as tokenized cash or representation of USD on blockchain. It is extremely useful in settling transactions, whether you are trading on an exchange or sending money across the world. You can read more about the stablecoin market here.
In 2015, Rune Christensen, the founder of Maker, had an idea of establishing a DAO on Ethereum to create a stablecoin that will be pegged to the USD. By 2017, Maker launched the first version of its stablecoin DAI.
1 DAI is pegged to 1 USD. Maker started out as a project that allowed users to pledge Ether as collateral and borrow DAI with a certain Loan-to-Value ratio against Ether. For example, you can pledge 10 ETH as collateral that is currently worth $18,500 and take out a loan worth $9,000.
This allows users to keep the upside price exposure to Ether while accessing USD liquidity at the same time. This is very similar to what banks offer to their private banking clients. You can deposit millions USD at a bank to purchase equity or bonds then collateralize these assets to take out loans against them. This makes these assets capital efficient.