Coinbase deploys capital from its Bootstrap Fund into Uniswap and PoolTogether

Coinbase has invested 1 million USDC into the ETH/USDC Uniswap pool and 100,000 into PoolTogether as part of its effort to provide more liquidity in DeFi. Coinbase is a part of the Centre Consortium along with Circle that launched USDC in 2018. Last fall, they announced the creation of a Bootstrap Fund to increase the reach of USDC and to support various DeFi protocols. To date, they have invested $1 million into both Compound and dYdX.

Why it matters

• The total capital deployed in DeFi has been decreasing as a result of various hacks and general market sentiment. Coinbase’s efforts are intended to reverse this trend and make these protocols more attractive, particularly as it relates to USDC’s use in them.
• USDC has been rapidly increasing in supply over the last two weeks from 460 million to nearly 700 million. This is still well below Tether’s supply of 6.8 billion, but as USDC becomes more entrenched into open finance applications, it could gain market share on the market leader.