Coinspeaker
Wirex to Take DeFi Mainstream with X-Accounts
Payments platform Wirex has plans of taking decentralized finance (DeFi) mainstream. The platform, which supports crypto, announced on Wednesday that it is launching a service that will enable users to earn as much as 10% and 16% interest of crypto and fiat holdings respectively. The service, called X-Accounts, is a collaborative effort with custody, transfer and settlement platform Fireblocks. Other involved in the project with Wirex are fellow DeFi proponents Aave, Uniswap, MakerDAO and 1inch.
The growing DeFi sector with its high yield potential continues to entice pro-crypto businesses. Now, even regular individuals can participate as X-Accounts will enable them to earn passively providing liquidity to platforms like Uniswap for example and lending on Aave. Wirex CEO Pavel Matveev explains:
“The income you can generate with DeFi pools and lending is much higher than the centralized model where you use institutional lenders to generate interest. The other way people earn in DeFi is by yield farming, but that’s outside our risk appetite and not suitable for this product.”
Addressing the question of risk, Matveev assures that Wirex will get up to $30M insurance on virtual assets for X-Accounts from the Fireblocks deal.
“Maximizing digital asset security is extremely important with this level of operational scale and efficiency, especially when it comes to DeFi,” Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov commented.
News of this partnership comes as Fireblocks is dealing with a lawsuit filed by a client who claims to have lost their access to over $70M worth of Ethereum.
The suit, filed at the Tel Aviv District Court by platform StakeHound on Tuesday cites alleged negligence as a cause of the loss of the ETH.
The suit reads in part:
“This is a human error committed by an employee of the defendants, who worked in an unsuitable work environment. The defendant irrevocably lost access to the plaintiff’s digital assets, which were deposited in an e-wallet provided by the defendant, causing the loss of 38,178 of the plaintiff’s ETH coins”.
Fireblock maintains that all of their clients’ assets were safe, with user keys backed up recoverable. It appears that in StakeHound’s case, the keys were ‘stored outside the platform’. Fireblock also revealed that the matter was under investigation and that they are working with concerned parties to ensure it is resolved.
It remains to be seen if and how the FireBlock lawsuit with the effect on this new partnership.