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FinTech companies are market leaders or laggards?
Crypto purchase on PayPal
FinTech company, PayPal has allowed users to purchase crypto since October 2020, allowing users to buy, sell and hold crypto on their wallets. This is a similar service to other online banks such as Revolut. This may be a great entry for beginners to get a sense of crypto, exposing investors to the volatility of crypto. However, any experienced crypto investor and user knows that this is not true ownership. Truth be told, the user does not own the crypto they think that they are buying. In the case of Revolut, users are “holding” crypto that Revolut owns. This is a prime example of custodial wallets, where the FinTech company is the true owner of the crypto that the users believe they own. Even more so on platforms that do not allow you to withdraw your crypto to external or third-party wallets.
This month PayPal took a highly requested leap towards allowing their users to withdraw their purchased crypto and digital assets to external wallets and exchanges. Some may say that this is a revolutionary step for a public FinTech company. That this is a right step towards greater adoption. This is true. However, according to demand it was about time.
Jose Fernandez da Ponte, senior vice president, blockchain, crypto and digital currencies at PayPal stated back in 2021 at the CoinDesk’s virtual Consensus event that they had planned to allow users to move their crypto to third-party wallets. “We are definitely responding to demand from users, that is one aspect” stated Jose. He also vocalised that as PayPal is a payments and commerce company, they are thinking about their role in the ecosystem is about increasing access.
Market leader or market laggards?
From a consumers and investors perspective, over the last two years there has been a significant rise in non-custodial wallet usage. This is evident when looking at the monthly DEX volume, as using a DEX requires the usage of a wallet.
Therefore, it poses the question: “Is PayPal really a market leader or not?”. DEX users have been moving crypto assets and NFT’s for years. There are other mainstream fintech companies that still do not allow the withdrawals of cryptos. Will see if PayPal will trigger a herd behavior for other custodial fintech companies.
However, note the fact that PayPal’s “game breaking” development is very finite. There is a very limited selection of crypto’s- Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. Hopefully PayPal will increase their selection of cryptos in the near future. If you know anything about diversification, then this selection is far from being diversified. Additionally, the external wallet withdrawal is for the time being only limited to eligible U.S. customers.
What FinTech companies can learn from Insula.
Insula Investment Management is like the rabbit that came late to race competing against cheetahs, and still won. At Insula investors can expose themselves to 40+ cryptos, have a private key, have a non-custodial wallet, and low fees. Insula has been utilising non-custodial wallets for years.
“Not your keys, not your coins” is something every crypto consumer, investor and trader should always remember. “Investing” in crypto and storing them on CEX or FinTech platforms that do now allow withdrawal, is like buying a car without a certification of ownership.
Diversification is one of the strongest strategies to mitigate risk. Having “all eggs in one basket” is what PayPal offers their users. If this basket drops, you will break all your eggs. Idealistically PayPal allows users to invest $1 into Bitcoin or Ethereum and experience true volatility, and worst-case scenario scare inexperienced investors away. Being over leveraged or even entirely leveraged into one or two coins is simply reckless. Depending on which crypto category (DeFi, Metaverse, P2E, L1’s, L2’s etc.), or market cap size you invest, one’s investment will move at different rates. It is for this specific reason that diversification can mitigate or counterbalance losses.
Apart from diversification, non-custodial wallets and low fees, Insula provides human support, onboarding, and contact. Making your first crypto investment can be extremely overwhelming. It is therefore Insula onboarding and support team and always at your disposal. When you consider making your first crypto investment, DYOR! Don’t choose the website that “looks the prettiest”. As behind this superficial website may lie a lot of FAQ, chatbots, dead-end emails that refer you back to the FAQ. Rather choose an investment platform that provides true ownership (non-custodial wallet), human interaction and that does not limit you two four cryptos. Find the rabbit that’s late to the race and still wins. In the end it’s an endurance race and not a sprint race.
What is true ownership?
“Not your keys, not your coin” or “Not your key, not your Bitcoin”. You hear this phrase in a lot of different variations. However the point here is the reference to the word “key”. Key refers to the Key phrase, also known as seed phrase or recovery phrase. This is the series of randomised 12 to 24 words that will grant you access to your wallet in case you forget your password. This is your ultimate back-up to regain access to your wallet.
Various CEX and FinTech companies that allow crypto purchasing and selling DO NOT provide users with keys. Ultimately raising the questions of “who really owns my crypto”. This question arises because of the fact that CEX and FinTech companies are able to block and freeze any transactions. Often “to act in the interest of the community” or “to protect users”. Therefore one may ask, who really has ultimate control over the crypto that you have purchased. For true ownership one can use wallets such as Metamask or Ledger and Trezor. These wallets will create a key to all users, that only you are responsible for.
Just recently during this month since writing this text. There have been two different crypto companies that have done just this. Celsius have paused all withdrawals, swaps and transfers between accounts. Also Binance temporarily suspended withdrawals on the Bitcoin network.
Ultimately this boils down to whether or not this is something that concerns you. Users are free to trade and purchase on whatever platform they choose to use. However, it may be something important to note when making your decision.
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How crypto asset management can survive a black swan cyber event
Insula’s founding idea:
The idea is to hedge Insula investors against the next “Mt. Gox” type of event, which is the “Lehman Brothers collapse” of crypto.
As centralised crypto platforms are growing huge (and start to heavily rely on lending and shadow banking), the question remains “what is going to happen to crypto when one of the largest of them breaks down”. This also extends to DeFI, since the DAO hack itself triggered the Ethereum Classic fork which shows that systematic changes shape the crypto industry beyond organic growth.
It is better to be prepared against unforeseen black swan events, and Insula intends to address small institutions needs, who may want to turn to smart contracts and crypto in order to decentralise away from centralised platform risk.
Buying crypto is not enough if the underlying platform reproduces all the flaws of traditional systems (i.e. *centralised exchanges are just banks in disguise* down the line). The tech is the same, only the marketing is different.
Insula’s journey to zero trust:
Zero trust in edge computing environment: a blockchain-based practical scheme. At Insula, we do not even want our clients to trust us and what we say, and this is why we do not have a marketing budget. What we do is a natural description of our products: we don’t tell stories.
Insula was founded in London in 2018 as a response to the growing marketing abuses in the crypto investment industry:
We suggest our clients to not trust what we say but to verify it instead. Verifying Insula’s contracts source code is a stronger assumption than believing what a person such as your banker/financial adviser wants to make you believe, and Insula built its foundation on these assumptions based on cold-hard code rather than human trust.
Human trust in banking has a poor track record. History shows all banks ultimately go bust due to a human mistake at some point. All of them, Insula solves this! In our view, “Insula’s code is law, and Insula is entirely technology-regulated and technology-secured. This leaves little room for human uncertainty and errors, and the error term is well identified & understood and accounted for.
The only remaining barrier is our prospective users technical understanding ability. We understand people don’t invest on what they don’t understand and that Insula may trigger the classic “fear-flight” response in prospective users who find themselves lost to overwhelming novelty and technical disruption.
This is why Insula also offers demos and educational sessions in order to allow crypto users to up their game and take back control with Insula allowing their crypto investments to survive and strive in an increasingly uncertain and hostile cyber environment.
Insula striving by focusing on the substance rather than form:
We remind our prospective users that the most popular crypto platforms with the most appealing designs are also the ones who get the most prone to being hacked: do not trust what you see!
Visible and perceived security has nothing to do with factual underlying truth! This is the difference between interface design & marketing (superficial, visible) and structural backend (foundational, invisible).
In crypto, the interface sells you the product but it is not an effective reflection of the underlying software product itself. This is where most users get tricked by their emotional bias and begin to consume irrationally, based on variables that are not the decisive ones i.e. a visually pleasant cryptocurrency exchange website design does not ensure its security. It only provides a mirage of it.
When superficiality takes over substance, it is best to halt a purchase or investment action and to reflect on it in our view, since there is a risk for the user to self-deceive in the long run.
Substance: What counts in Insula’s security (core, backend, substantial).
-Security audits (Successfully audited by PWC Zurich).
-Storing crypto offline in hardware (stored offline).
-Resistance to government-backed attacks (Resisted successfully).
-Public cybersecurity ratings (systematically in the industry’s top tier).
-Publicly available information (All info is public).
-Cybersecurity procedures (regularly updated and communicated to our client base).
-No risk/liability for loss of client crypto (Insula is not a “bank” or “own” the vault/funds). Clients possess their own crypto.
Form: What does not count in Insula’s security and is a marketing bias (superficial, unimportant surface level details to Insula’s security)
-Website design, colors and speed – only visual stimuli.
-Public perception of the founding team – only thoughts.
-Marketing, wording and political opinions – only thoughts.
-Business reputation – only perception
-Government lobbying capacity- only talks and words.
-Media informational influence capacity – only words.
-Social media posts – can’t impact security.
-Online reviews – do not always reflect/calibrate the factual truth.
At Insula we gave up 100% of our marketing budget and invested it all in cybersecurity in order to deliver secure value to our clients. We prefer to deliver absolute, verifiable security, rather than telling stories and with an engineered visual mirage.
At Insula we focus on what is core rather than on the appearance of things. In a cyberwar if you do not have a strategy, you are part of someone else’s strategy.
What is your strategy for securing your crypto investment over the next decades? If you do not have one, and leave it to tomorrow you may well be part of someone else’s strategy: a drained account may be the price of it.
We believe companies who do not overinvest in cybersecurity will get washed away by time and natural selection, much like the path of water and forms river’s bedrocks: blockchain is where crypto belongs to and is its only bedrock.
Cybersecurity: crypto in our funds is owned by our investors, rather than stored by ourselves or a risky platform. (not your key = not your crypto).
Insula: an internet-based company that banks offline.
Insula cybersecurity: Insula took active crypto asset management offline.
Insula based its online to offline security transition on the finding that the ultimate firewall is not needing a firewall at all. Anything online is virtually compromised already.
Insula took crypto offline:
In 2019, Insula mentioned edge computing R&D development of edge computing features and distributed intelligence via information flow richness. Insula mentioned that its final product would be perceived by the user with its sensory sense as a device: In 2022, Insula eventually made it true, with an unseizable, offline system.
The original research project was called Insula Fortress in 2018, Insula’s founding year. building on the intuition of a decentralized self running statistical arbitrage algorithmic trading system with offline storage.
Insula’s evolving security framework: a Big Bang analogy. From a centralized company to an ever-decentralizing software network re-distributing resources between members across spacetime. Insula’s security frameworks now cover IoT systems and applications in edge computing, beyond software only. Insula literally expanded to the real, digital tangible world.
The journey to a zero trust architecture can seem like climbing a mountain at times. Determining which approach you should take, looking for a solution which is safe and efficient. When you set off it can be tough going. I’m hoping these principles will make it easier to understand what is needed when planning your transition to a zero trust architecture.
Crypto exchanges follow the same model as banking, but with crypto. The format has changed, but the format is the same.
Insula offers something radically different, closer to crypto’s original etos:
Why Insula investment funds are solving the two main problems of crypto-investing:
1-Cybersecurity: crypto in our funds is owned by our investors, rather than stored by ourselves or a risky platform.(not your key = not your crypto).
2-Risk-adjusted returns: our investment funds are diversified, rather than having all eggs invested in one basket.
To date, crypto investment solutions tend to only expose return potential to their clients, but often cover superficially (if not at all) cybersecurity and investment downside risks – until a problem arises.
At Insula we only do one thing, but we do it well: we offer *secure* crypto-asset management solutions *on the blockchain*, and educate our clients in a transparent way in the process.
Service:
A major benefit of choosing Insula Investment Management™ to invest in crypto is that you will be onboarded, guided and receive endless support throughout the process. At Insula you are never left talking to a wall – unlike other crypto platforms that are available in self-service only.
LinkedIn ranks Insula’s onboarding and support services as one of the best in the category “Top products in Cryptocurrency Exchange Platforms”. Insula’s focus on providing a quality human service is also mentioned in TopUkCrypto Fund provider 2020,21,22, and mentioned as one of the 4 most salient crypto asset management companies in the world in “Riding the Crypto Asset Management Wave”.
At Insula we understand that our clients live in a busy world, have a full time job and little time to spare. They only want to invest their savings in crypto securely and make returns, nothing more, nothing less.
More importantly, Insula’s clients expect a platform with a human face to proceed to prompt, informed and secure investments without having to go through a liturgy of documentation & processes by themselves.
Insula focuses on quality rather than on quantity – this is how we stand out:
-Few, selected clients that are well served with personal attention and multiple managers/per client.
-Market – beating returns.
-Military- grade cybersecurity.
-Prompt support response time
-No co-dependence or information asymmetry between Insula and its clients since clients hold their own funds and Insula is an entirely public infrastructure.
-Competitive management & performance fees.
Automated and interface-only platforms will never compete with a dedicated team of human specialists. We understand that our clients who deposit their hard-earned savings on Insula expect the attention and support they deserve.
Military grade security:
Insula’s cybersecurity level is also stronger than the industry average since Insula and its team do not hold any funds, taking away risk associated with custody and investment funds.
Insula’s security is already battle-tested, rather than only hypothetical:
Insula has been building up & training capacity for four years to resist cyberwarfare instead of focussing on profit and growth right away. To us, survival & competition is key to Insula’s clients ‘ long-term investments success. In the ranking of human needs, security is the absolute foundation of everything. Now that Insula has built rock-solid foundations, it is ready to begin building up its commercial capabilities.
There are two types of companies: Those who know they’ve been hacked & those who don’t: Insula has already resisted unsuccessful government-backed cyberattacks in the past which built further confidence, resilience and trust in our systems. Most platforms do not resist such attacks: last year alone, $7bn was stolen from crypto platforms worldwide, especially from the largest names in the industry. While nothing was ever stolen from Insula.
At Insula, only the client holds their own funds unlike in banking. There is nothing to steal within Insula and this is what makes it a safer cyber-environment than a crypto exchange or traditional crypto fund. If you have currently stored crypto on an online exchange you can consider moving it offline to a secure Insula solution.
Insula: what is the next wave of disruptive innovation?
Insula aims at maintaining its position as the techiest crypto hedge fund available on the market by continuously developing disruptive crypto asset management solutions inspired from the traditional equity market.
Insula’s software versions act as a wave washing off sand on the shore: each new release erases the past ones and bulbs from scratch. Why? Then copycats get distanced and need to “recopy” Insula to keep up with it. Insula leads and misleads it plagia versions.
#Security notice: Insula is a non-custodial trading platform, we do not hold any funds. Insula, its employees and computer systems do not hold any funds or private key accesses for physical security reasons. Only Insula’s depositors have access to their own funds within the Insula ecosystem. This keeps our investors trading funds safe on our platform. Learn more about Insula’s security policy here: https://insulainvestments.com/crypto-cyber-security-awareness/
#Disclaimer notice: None of the consultation, information, video, blog posts & any other form of content is to be taken as financial advice. WE/INSULA are not financial advisers.
$BTC becomes legal tender in Madeira
BTC became legal tender in Insula Investment Management hometown – Funchal, Madeira.
At the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami the president Miguel Filipe Machado de Albuquerque of Madeira announced that Bitcoin (BTC) will be adopted as a legal tender.
Madeira – Europe’s capital of BTC
Madeira is an autonomous region of Portugal situated in the North Atlantic Ocean 520 km west of Morocco. The Island has an estimated population of around 250,000 in 2021. With the capital city being Funchal located on the main island’s south coast.
During the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Madeira saw an increase in freelance and IT specialists move to Madeira. With a growth in digital nomads and tourist business owners, the beauty and technological growth opportunity that the island had to offer quickly became apparent.
Madeira has an abundance of benefits to the island. Apart from the warm climate and beautiful nature, property on Madeira is significantly lower than on mainland Portugal. Living costs on the island are relatively low outside of the capital city, allowing residents to live a luxurious lifestyle. Madeira has a high level of personal security and low taxes, allowing registered eligible business owners to receive a corporate tax rate of 5%.
Bitcoin Miami 2022
The president Miguel Filipe Machado de Albuquerque of Madeira announced at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, that Bitcoin ($BTC) will be adopted as a legal tender on the island.
“I believe in the future and I believe in bitcoin”, Albuquerque said on stage at the conference. He added that his government will “continue to work to create a fantastic environment for bitcoin in Madeira”
Insula in Madeira
Insula Investment Management’s offices are currently located in Funchal, Madeira and has been located here for one year, thriving in the newly adopted European capital city of Bitcoin. Following an initial phase of adoption, it can be expected that new Bitcoiners get interested in exploring crypto further. Insula comes into play here, to allow existing crypto owners to go beyond Bitcoin only – there are thousands of cryptocurrencies out there!
Insula Investment Management offers investors crypto investment funds diversified into various crypto-assets in one transaction such as DeFi, Metaverse and Stablecoin on both the Ethereum and Polygon network. At Insula we provide seamless onboarding and support to all investors that invest in our funds. We invite all prospects and investors into our ecosystem chat to allow investors to maintain continuous contact with the team at Insula Investment Management.
In 2019, Insula Investment Management shared with Investing.com that at Insula “No fiat is involved in the equation – We do the accounting in Bitcoin & only accept investment in cryptocurrency.” Insula Investment Management additionally has its own native Insula Token ($ISLA) that serves as a utility token that is a multichain token on Ethereum, Binance Chain and Polygon.
At Insula Investment Management we strive to research the latest trends in crypto to allow inventors to gain exposure to rising crypto trends early. The team at Insula also has a future outlook into the industry, exploring the latest opportunities and legislative developments in order to stay ahead of future regulatory changes.
Insula Investment Management provides utmost security to investors through using blockchain technology and enabling investors to true crypto ownership through private wallets. Of which Insula Investment Management has no custody, allowing our investors to invest autonomously without requiring consultation, advisory or approval from the team at Insula.
Insula’s services
Additionally Insula Investment Management provides consultation service to enterprises or businesses that are exploring integration or adoption of blockchain technology or cryptocurrencies. We provide paid consultation services about crypto funds, tokens, legal, crypto assets/the matic crypto investments per industry, cyber security consulting and digital marketing.
Lastly our B2B services are the creation of crypto tokens or crypto funds. In the process of creating your own token, our expertise are within the areas of tokenomics, smart contact deployment and web3.0 integration. Together with the client’s involvement we customize the token to the clients desires.
Creating your own fund is also largely customizable to the clients needs. At Insula Investment Management our expertise are within the fund hosting and integration from web3.0 to web2.0, asset universe selection and portfolio design according to the clients aspirations. Moreover build and sustain actively managed algorithmic trading funds. The team at Insula have extensive legal knowledge on decentralized funds and lastly the onboarding and support of prospects and investors.
We have a great deal of expertise in these areas and hope to teach, create, guide and promote businesses to explore and adopt these technologies.
If you are a Madeira resident interested in investing your Bitcoin or Ethereum at Insula instead of just holding it, we invite you to schedule a meeting with our team in Funchal: https://calendly.com/d/cpc-5sn-6zr/insula-funchal-office-hours?month=2022-04
If you are living outside of Madeira and interested in investing your cryptocurrencies at Insula, we invite you to schedule a meeting with our team via an e-meeting discuss our investment funds: https://insulainvestments.com/schedule-a-demo/
Crypto cyber security awareness
Crypto cyber security awareness + Being your own bank = True Ownership
With the ever growing and fast paced evolution of technology, looms the constant threat of cyber-risk, -crime and -hacks. This is something that is crucial for not just business owners to be aware of, but also you as an individual. Crypto is known for its revolutionary technology, transparency, and security. However, there are certain links within blockchain and crypto that are weak if not secured, audited, and stored safely.
Measures for you to ensure your own safety
Crypto Storage: Towards the end of February, Jesse Powell (Co-Founder, CEO – Kraken Exchange) replied to a tweet, that everyone was already aware of. However, the reality and confirmation of the truth made people reconsider whether holding any crypto at all on a centralized exchange (CEX) was a good idea.
This has been seen in the past where the biggest CEX have disabled the possibility to withdraw crypto and/or FIAT from your personal account. Question you should ask yourself: “Who really owns the crypto that you paid for”? The truth is that (as stated in the name) CEX’s are not wallets, but rather exchanges and a mean for you to buy & sell your crypto.
Be Your Own Bank: This is the utopian way for absolute and complete control of your crypto. You are most likely well aware of the terms “cold” and “hot” wallets. In simple terms, the primary difference between the two are that cold wallets are considered the more secure storage solution as they are not connected to the internet and are hardware devices. Whereas a hot wallet is intended for everyday crypto users and therefore connected to the internet, in the form of an application on your mobile phone. Examples of a cold storage device is a Ledger wallet or Trezor wallet. MetaMask or Trust Wallet are examples of cold storage wallets.
Therefore, for you to be in full custody and rightful ownership of your crypto you may want to consider storing your crypto on either of these types of wallets.
Password storage: Password and seed/recovery phrase storage in a critical step for you to becoming your own bank. As losing access or forgetting your password can happen to everyone. However, therefore you have a seed/recovery phrase. Your personalized seed/recovery phrase is what will gain you (or anyone who gets a hold of it) access back to your wallet. It is due to this very reason it is highly important that you store your seed/recovery phrase in a correct and responsible manner. There is a rule of thumb written by Ledger that explain what the best ways are to keep it safe. Self-custody and true ownership come with its benefits and responsibilities.
Measures we take to ensure your safety at Insula Investment Management
Funds: At Insula Investment Management we enable our investors to become their own banks. Being a non-custodial solution is one of Insula’s core values. All our investors own and control their own private keys. This enables our investors to be fully autonomous with their investment decisions if they desire. We do provide onboarding and investment strategy support. Ultimately however, our investors choose when to buy and sell without the need to consult or approval of any team member from Insula. At Insula you are your own bank.
Smart contract-based custody: The security, trustworthiness and reliability were the focal points when choosing which smart contract to use at Insula. For these reasons Insula chose Enzyme Finance. Enzyme Finance has been in the game for a long time and have brought these three factors through their reliable external auditors who conduct their smart contract code assessment. Most recently PwC Switzerland conducted Enzymes smart contract code assessment and concluded that “We found that the protocol design and the reviewed code were of consistently high quality” (Avantgarde Finance Appendix III – ISAE 3000 Report Smart Contract Code Assessment, Enzyme Protocol, PwC Switzerland, Andreas Eschbach & Hubert Ritzdorf, 19.01.2021). Through the use of smart contract, and our investors being their own bank. We can with utmost certainty assure you that if (Hopefully never) Insula were to go bankrupt, all investors would not lose a single cent of their investments.
$ISLA Token: ISLA token is Insula native token that is used to access all our services within our ecosystem. Currently $ISLA Token is a multichain token available on three of the most established networks: Ethereum Network, Binance Chain and Polygon Network. The $ISLA Token has a limited supply, which is in full circulation and is deflationary (5% of total supply is already burnt). We are proud to boast that the $ISLA Token has been securely moved +$20M across three blockchains between 2500 unique investors from all over the world.
Moreover, we would like to stress the fact that Insula Investment Management does not accept any FIAT payments, deposits, or transaction. Every form of transaction at Insula Investment Management is executed solely with crypto.
Website: To ensure the safety and legitimacy our own website, we have requested a cybersecurity health scan by Craft.co. Craft.co assess the cyber-risk and prevent supply chain disruption. After having conducted their audit on our homepage, our cybersecurity rating was graded 94/100.
Secure Support: The team at Insula Investment Management are always present to aid and support our investors needs. Therefore, we have established a safe communication method that we have streamlined to onboard all our investors. Additionally, to ensure the integrity and privacy of our investors we never allow our clients to share their screens with us. This is to mitigate the possibility of our clients accidentally sharing their passwords or seed/recovery phrases when they are creating their wallets and accounts. Moreover, Insula will never request any personal information such as passwords, private keys, 2 factor authentication codes, or remote access to investors machines.
Additional sources:
https://bitcourier.co.uk/blog/crypto-fund-uk
https://www.cryptocurryclub.com/post/riding-the-crypto-asset-management-wave
https://hackmd.io/@RIXgTn-rRoasGOobdnzIGg/rkNSqfpHI
https://hackmd.io/@VV473-xrSHmvw8JpAV-8bQ/SJDhXKS58
Get to know the team and onboard today:
Schedule a demo call with our team and get to know the team via a call.
https://calendly.com/d/ch4-htv-gcd/insula-demo
Social Medias and other links:
Twitter: @insula_im
Instagram: @insula_im
LinkedIn: Insula Investment Managements
Telegram: Insula Investment Management
Announcement: Launch and hosting of Diverse ($DIV)
Insula announces the launch and hosting of our new partner Diverse ($DIV)
What is DIV?
DIV is the first decentralized crypto ETF that offers a safe and democratized investment vehicle to gain exposure to digital assets. The Diverse Funds are digital asset vaults designed to track tokens’ performance operating on the Polygon Network (a scaling solution for Ethereum).
What is Insula doing for DIV? Insula acts as technology provider
Insula Investment Management is the service provider (Fund-as-a-Service) and the hosting platform for DIV Funds.
Therefore, DIV DAO is a client of Insula’s fund hosting offer: Insula fund hosting is an online service that allows asset managers to deploy & manage their own smart contract-based crypto investment fund. Insula’s team brought together the knowledge to create a decentralized fund, hosting & launching of the fund and the onboarding and support of new investors.
Learn more about Insula for asset management projects: Fund creation & hosting:
Learn more on: https://insulainvestments.com/fund
To read more information about the Insula communication of DIV and what this means for ISLA holders.
Metaverse and DeFi boom in 2021, what will happen in 2022?
Data from 10/01/2022 (according to CoinMarketCap):
Metaverse Market Capitalization: €27,386,077,715.00 / $30,930,219,576.41
DeFi Market Capitalization: €132,913,702,804.00/ $150,114,596,738.68
Metaverse
Axie Infinity, Decentraland, Sandbox, Enjin Coin and Render Token are all tokens you may have heard a lot about over the last year. According to Bloomberg Intelligence Metaverse may be $800 billion market opportunity.
Axie Infinity is one of the top-performing cryptocurrencies of 2021. It’s already seen eye-watering gains of over 24,000%. Axie is a play-to-earn game, which means that players earn crypto rewards that have value outside the game.
Decentraland is a 3D virtual reality platform that you can visit today. You don’t need a headset to explore, just an internet browser. You don’t even need to own any cryptocurrency — you can enter as a guest and visit this virtual world.
Sandbox is very similar to Decentraland in that player can buy land on which they create and share games and experiences. The biggest difference is that it has not yet fully launched its virtual world to the public. However, there’s more customization in Sandbox, and a bigger focus on NFT creation.
Enjin is a platform that lets people create and manage their NFTs. It integrates with several gaming platforms and allows players to use an item across multiple games or sell it on the marketplace.
Another aspect of the metaverse are the companies that enable the creation of those 3D and augmented reality visuals. Here’s where Render comes in. Its decentralized infrastructure utilizes otherwise unused computer processing power to render digital content.
Metaverse in 2022
Besides the Crypto games and protocols that are building the metaverse. There are several big global companies that are building up their own Metaverses. Such as Meta (previously known as Facebook), Microsoft, Epic Games and Tencent. 2022 will bring a lot of development on our current understanding and interpretation of the Metaverse, As crypto projects and global companies race to build their own utopian metaverse.
Insula Scheria
If you are interested in investing in the Metaverse, Insula Investment Management has a Metaverse Fund: Insula Scheria, with average monthly returns of 34.56%. The fund consists of Metaverse tokens such as The Sandbox (SAND), Decentraland (MANA), Enjin Coin (ENJ) and more. Follow this link to find out more.
DeFi
Decentralized finance (DeFi) is an emerging financial technology based on secure distributed ledgers like those used by cryptocurrencies. The system removes the control banks and institutions have on money, financial products, and financial services. DeFi Token and protocols such as Terra (LUNA), Avalanche (AVAX), Chainlink (LINK), Uniswap (UNI) and Fantom (FTM) have gained tremendous growth and transactions over the year 2021.
Terra Over the last year, its price has soared over 14,000%, and it’s become the second-most-popular decentralized finance (DeFi) platform behind Ethereum. The Terra blockchain features an array of stablecoins, cryptocurrencies designed to track the price of fiat currencies. For instance, TerraUSD tokens are tied to the price of the U.S. dollar, and TerraEUR tokens are tied to the price of the Euro. There are several other examples, but in all cases, those stablecoins can maintain their value because of LUNA, a token on the Terra blockchain that is specifically designed to absorb volatility.
Avalanche is an open, programmable smart contracts platform for decentralized applications. Launch Ethereum dApps that confirm transactions instantly and process thousands of transactions per second, far beyond any decentralized blockchain platform today. Deploy blockchains that fit your own application needs. Build your own virtual machine and dictate exactly how the blockchain should operate. Stake, or lock up, your AVAX to help process transactions and further secure the platform–providing security guarantees well-above the 51% standard. You probably have the hardware required to join the platform.
Chainlink is a blockchain abstraction layer that enables universally connected smart contracts. Through a decentralized oracle network, Chainlink allows blockchains to securely interact with external data feeds, events, and payment methods, providing the critical off-chain information needed by complex smart contracts to become the dominant form of digital agreement.
Uniswap is a popular decentralized trading protocol, known for its role in facilitating automated trading of decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens. Uniswap aims to keep token trading automated and completely open to anyone who holds tokens, while improving the efficiency of trading versus that on traditional exchanges.
Fantom is a directed acyclic graph (DAG) smart contract platform providing decentralized finance (DeFi) services to developers using its own bespoke consensus algorithm. Together with its in-house token FTM, Fantom aims to solve problems associated with smart-contract platforms, specifically transaction speed, which developers say they have reduced to under two seconds.
The graph below shows the TVL (Total Value Locked) in DeFi from the beginning of 2020 till 2022. Total Value Locked represents the number of assets that are currently being staked in a specific protocol
DeFi in 2022
2021 for DeFi has been a tremendous boom, and what will happen to DeFi in 2022 will still to be seen. However what we do know is that DeFi has been a disruption to the traditional (centralized) financial sector and will most likely remain this way for the near future. According to a Forbes article here are some speculations on what will happen within DeFi in 2022.
“DeFi will still be a thing in 2022. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of DeFi,”
“There are many new products to come that we can’t even imagine today.”
“DeFi will continue to lead in terms of total value in the ecosystem, but blockchain gaming will introduce more people to crypto because the learning and adoption curves in gaming are notably smaller than that of DeFi,”
Insula Pala
If you are interested in investing in DeFi, Insula Investment Managements has a DeFi Fund: Insula Pala, with an average monthly return of 2.55%. The fund consists of DeFi tokens such as Uniswap (UNI), DefiPulse Index (DPI), Synthetix Network Token (SNX), Aragon Network Token (ANT) and many more. Follow this link to find out more
Reasons for why to invest with us
Unlike many traditional investment funds, Insula Investment Management gives you as an investor a lot of freedom to: store your own keys and passwords, invest, and withdraw at your own discretion without consultation of an investment manager. You are in full custody of your own wallet.
-Full control over your investment
-Store your own passwords & seed phrases
-Autonomous Investing
-Exposure to diversified crypto assets
-Deposit & withdraw at your own discretion
How to get in touch
-Twitter: Insula_im
-Instagram: Insula_im
-Telegram: https://t.me/insulacrypto
-LinkedIn: Insula Investment Management
-Blog Posts: https://insulainvestments.com/insula-pro-terminal/ (bottom of page)
-Email: Info@Insulainvestments.com
Source:
- https://coinmarketcap.com/view/defi/
- https://coinmarketcap.com/view/metaverse/
- https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/metaverse-may-be-800-billion-market-next-tech-platform/
- https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/global-companies-building-up-the-metaverse
- https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/total-value-locked-tvl
- https://defillama.com/
- https://www.investopedia.com/decentralized-finance-defi-5113835
- https://insulainvestments.com/fundterminal/
- https://www.avax.network/
- https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/chainlink/
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2021/12/30/cryptocurrency-investing-predictions-for-2022/?sh=5da211b41891
$ISLA Token is available on BSC
NEWS: This week we have increased the supply of ISLA token on the Binance Smart Chain. Total Supply now is: 53,244.589926 ISLA
Why do we have ISLA tokens on BSC?
The primary reason for why we have ISLA Tokens on BSC is because the gas fees are lower than on ERC-20 (Ethereum network). Also, we wanted to make the ISLA token more accessible and affordable to investors. The total supply of ISLA BSC tokens are not newly minted ISLA Tokens. Rather, they are ISLA Tokens that have been transferred from the ERC-20 total supply.
Moving your ISLA Tokens from ERC-20 network to BSC networks is something that all our ISLA Token holders can do. This can be done very simply with the use of a ‘bridge’ protocol. We recommend that you use OmniBridge. Under the paragraph ” Guides To Buying ISLA Token ” of this blog, we will provide you with guides on how to use OmniBridge and how to purchase ISLA tokens on BSC.
What’s new?
As mentioned, the total supply has just been increased to a total of 53,244.589926 ISLA. What is a great advantage of this supply, is that currently there are not many BSC ISLA Token holders. You can compare the figures between ISLA ERC-20 supply and ISLA BSC supply by following the provided links.
We are looking into a potential means to rewarding our BSC ISLA Token holders. To stay up to date on developments regarding this, make sure to follow us on our social media accounts.
ISLA Token price prediction and correlated crypto currencies
We want to share with all our readers and investors some very insightful information. This is publicly available information; however, it may give you some interesting insight on what cryptos in the market correlate to the ISLA Token. In the picture below shows which tokens have a positive and a negative price correlation with the ISLA Token. This implies that when the price of these token increased or decreases it have a positive or negative effect on the ISLA Token (depending on which token is moving). For further interesting details regarding the ISLA token such as: sentiment, Insula price predictions, indicators, and historical performance visits this site.
Guides To Buying ISLA Token
You may choose to do this in several ways:
- Simplest: ‘Swap’ (Any Crypto e.g., BNB) Directly on MetaMask (browser extension or mobile app) for ISLA Token
- NOTE: Make sure that you are on the BSC Mainnet. Also, this requires that you already have crypto on your MetaMask wallet.
- If you do not have any crypto’s on your MetaMask we recommend this guide
- Requires Use of Bridge: Buy ISLA Token from ERC-20 Network and transfer to BSC Mainnet
- Requires Use of Bridge: Transfer current ISLA Token holdings from ERC-20 Network to BSC Mainnet
For options 2 & 3 we kindly direct you to the guide that we have created on all the relevant steps to complete this procedure.
ISLA Token contract addresses
BSC Contract address: 0xfaa50bd0088c39f253102e85e2c78f24890062f7
ERC-20 Contract address: 0x697ef32b4a3f5a4c39de1cb7563f24ca7bfc5947
Contact Details & Social Media’s
-Twitter: @insula_im
-Instagram: Insula_im
-Telegram: https://t.me/insulacrypto
-LinkedIn: Insula Investment Management
-Email: Info@Insulainvestments.com
Recap of 2021 in Crypto
Biggest News and Events in 2021 for crypto
Happy New Years readers and Insula Investment Management community. 2021 Has been a very eventful year within crypto. With a lot of bullish & bearish movement, FUD that made everyone hold their breath. Strength, growth and adoption within crypto that has shaped the future in such a way that is making everyone draw their eyes towards crypto.
BTC and Biggest gainers of 2021
It is undeniable that 2021 was quite unique, in several ways. To begin let’s look at Bitcoin (BTC). BTC on the 1st of January 2021 to 14th of April 2021 went from slightly under $29,500 to slightly over $65,000 (+120%). Which at the time was all time high. This was a remarkable run. However, BTC didn’t steal the spotlight in 2021. According to Bitcoin.com top three gainers in 2021 were: Gala (GALA) increased by +212,036%, Axie Infinity (AXS) increased by +18,957% and Content Value Network (CVNT) increased by +18,572%. Of course, there were many more remarkable winners.
NFT’s and P2E
With Axie Infinity in mind, 2021 was the year of P2E (play-2-earn) / GameFi year in which we saw dozens of P2E games gain popularity. This was the first time where players and crypto enthusiasts got the opportunity to play games in which they could earn crypto in return. Additionally, it was the first time in which people playing games could own a part of the game they were playing, through the integration of NFT’s.
About NFT’s, it started off as: “it’s just a JPEG”, “it’s just pixels”, “This is not real art”. And today, according to Investopedia.com most expensive NFT was sold for $69.3 Million. The NFT activity grew tremendously throughout 2021, with numerous NFT projects gained tremendous traction.
Crypto Conferences
The sheer number of conferences around the world is another proving factor that is showing the tremendously fast pace of adoption and growing interest in crypto and blockchain. Here is a short list of conferences that were held around the world.
- World Forum of Ethereum Scaling and Upgrading 2021 (Shanghai, China)
- Ethereum London Hark Fork (London, UK)
- Blockchain Expo Global 2021 (London, Amsterdam & North America)
- Cardano Summit 2021 (Virtual and held in-person across the globe)
- Solana Breakpoint 2021 (Lisbon, Portugal)
- LA Blockchain Summit (Los Angeles, California, North America)
- Miami Crypto EXP (Miami, Florida, North America)
Other Memorable Mentions:
- Nayib Bukele / El Salvador (BTC legal tender)
- Kazakhstan (Nearly 1/5th of the world’s Bitcoin mining output)
- Coinbase (First crypto company to list on the U.S. Stock exchange)
- Metaverse (The Sandbox, Decentraland, Enjin Coin, Axie Infinity)
- Solana (New smart contract-enabled networks emerged on the scene)
- Avalanche (New smart contract network that shot into the top 10)
- OpenSea (First mover in the NFT art sector and leading marketplace)
- ProShares ETF (First Bitcoin ETF)
- Visa and PayPal (support for buys and sells for cryptocurrencies)
- DeFi Boom (DeFi grew at a tremendous rate and popularity)
- Institutional Cryptocurrency Adoption
- Crypto becomes a multi-trillion-dollar asset class
Note: There was many more memorable mentions. However, this list would go on forever.
Rug Pull and Crypto hack
The infamous Squid Game token rug pull. With the rise of the famous Netflix show Squid Game, a token (unrelated to Netflix or the creators of Squid Game) called Squid Game saw a $2.8 billion rug pull scam. Also, the unthinkable crypto hack occurred in 2021. A hacker stole more then $600 million in crypto from Poly Network (NOT Polygon (MATIC), the two are unrelated).
FUD (China Crypto BAN, Environmental Concern, Legislation/Tax Selling/CBDC’s, COVID-19)
With all this extremely bullish news for crypto, we did have quite a few impactful moments of FUD. For example, the news of China banning crypto in April sent Bitcoin plummeting down roughly 50%. China banning crypto has been headline new many times over the 10 years. This time however things were a bit more serious.
In 2021 we also saw the growing concern for the environmental concerns and impact that crypto has. Specifically, regarding the blockchain network heavy electricity usage. Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk went from accepting Bitcoin as payments for Tesla cars from one day, and suddenly no longer accepting Bitcoin as payment. His primary concern being the use of fossil fuels for crypto mining.
Legislation and CBDC’s has been a quickly emerging topic throughout 2021, where the crypto community seems rather divided. One side argues that legislation for CBDC’s goes against the fundamentals of cryptocurrencies, and that public sectors should leave crypto at bay. However, the other argument is that legislation would bring more clarity and stability. This is however a very controversial topic and the future regarding legislation and CBDC’s is yet to be determined.
COVID-19 has been a global pandemic and impacted people a lot from a personal and professional standpoint. However, it has also affected the crypto market. When new variants of the COVID-19 pandemic have appeared globally the crypto market has reacted rather negatively and caused a decline in prices.
2022
2022 is a new year with new opportunities, new price targets and room for growth. At Insula Investment Management, we would like to wish you a great start to the new year, lots of great health and strength. We are excited to begin this new year off strongly. The team at Insula are all back to work at the highest gear. We are excited to work with you and share our progress and journey for the new year.
Insula, ISLA Token and our Ecosystem.
What is Insula Investment Management?
Insula is a fully decentralized hedge fund that aims to outperform Bitcoin. Investors in the fund maintain full custody of their assets; Insula can trade, but only the investor can make withdrawals. The strategy is to run actively traded funds that are diversified and market neutral, thereby limiting risk.
Insula also makes use of algorithms and machine learning to maximize trading opportunities. Decisions to buy or sell are made based on automated signal generations and based on averaged out mathematical oscillators & indicators. This removes human bias and frees Insula from the rollercoaster of human emotion that fuels the majority of buying and selling in the crypto market.
ISLA Token (ERC-20 and BSC)
First and foremost, ISLA Token is our native currency that you can invest in. It is used as means of payment for our services in our ecosystem and all ISLA Token are in full circulation. The maximum total supply ISLA Token is 1,028,109.37 on ERC-20. Of which 18,244.59 ISLA Tokens are available on BSC. In Q4 of 2021 we have had the most ISLA Token burns. To be informed about news such as ISLA Token burns, follow us on our social medias (view bottom of blog)
Why Insula and what are the perks?
-Full control over your investment
-Store your own passwords & seed phrases
-Autonomous Investing
-Exposure to diversified crypto assets
-Deposit & withdraw at your own discretion
Services that are exclusively available to ISLA holders:
-Legal advisory
-Blockchain-based fund issuance and hosting
-Fund distribution
-Cloud-based algorithmic strategy development & updates
-Client technical support
-Tailor-made client interface
-Tax reconciliation
ISLA Token is a voucher redeemable for:
-Your own fund
-Support services
-Advisory
-Software dev
-Legal
Other services provided by Insula:
–Crypto related consulting (Legal consulting, quantitative or market research, cyber security advice, investment strategies, intellectual property, smart contract)
-Token creation
-Fund creation
Contact Details and Social Media:
Demo Call: https://insulainvestments.com/schedule-a-demo/
Twitter: insula_im
Instagram: insula_im
Email: Info@insulainvestments.com
Telegram: https://t.me/insulacrypto
What is Enzyme Sulu-Beta on Polygon? And what’s new?
Insula Investment Management have been granted access to the Enzyme Sulu-Beta on Polygon. Insula is 1 of 100 first to be able to test this new and updated version service by Enzyme Finance. Enzyme Finance have called Sulu as: “One-stop shop for savers in DeFi“. Keep reading to understand why this is the case and what Sulu has to offer in comparison to Enzyme V2.
What Does Insula Currently Use?
Currently Insula has fund available on Enzyme Finance V2. Enzyme Finance, previously named Melon Protocol, is a protocol built on Ethereum (ETH) that allows users to create, manage and invest in custom crypto asset management vehicles. Enzyme aims to decentralize traditional asset management, a field that has historically been the domain of professional financial advisors and firms.
The core tenets of Enzyme v2 were security, customizability, composability, upgradability and improved gas efficiencies. With Sulu, Enzyme aims to leverage new architecture to focus on extensibility & composability.
What Is New With Sulu?
Native Borrowing:
Lending on Enzyme is not a new feature, but now with Sulu, you will be able to borrow as well. This is a wonderful feature for long-term holders who do not earn yield on their holdings. For example: Long-term ETH holders can hold their position whilst simultaneously take a loan against their ETH as collateral. In that case you can deposit ETH to finance borrowing DAI. Currently DAI earns more interest on lending protocols than ETH. Therefore, you can deposit the DAI on lending protocols and earn interest and farm liquidity tokens too. Eventually Enzyme Finance’s goal is to enable this process natively by the next release.
Vault Token Transferability:
At the moment tokenized shares in any vault are non-transferable. However, making these shares transferable would create new use-cases. Making Enzyme Vault Shares transferable would allow: Pre-seeded Vaults & Tokenised fees to incentivise early depositors. (refer to link for further details)
Curve Pool integration:
Curve pools is a large source of liquidity in DeFi and is very profitable to deposit into Curve pools and earn token for providing liquidity. This will be possible on Sulu natively!!
Idle Integration:
“Idle provides you with a range of risk-adjusted approaches to achieving the best yield on stable coins and wBTC. Their best-yield approach offers up to 44% APY on stable coins at the time of writing and their risk-adjusted yield approach gets you almost 14%. These returns are further enhanced because you can farm IDLE token for depositing into these savings pools.”
This gives you a taste of what Enzyme Sulu has to offer. However, this is not all. More features such as AAVE Integration, Balancer integration, Support for Staked ETH, Multi-protocol Yield Farming, Exploring the possibilities of Gas reimbursements for Portfolio Managers and MIP7 Implementation will all be available upon the launch of Sulu.
What Does This Mean For Investors?
As an investor in Insula Investment Management Funds, you will gain access to all these new features on one platform, all whilst functioning on Polygon network with low gas fees. Sulu truly is a one-stop and we are very excited to offer you all these new features.
This is scalability! This is growth! This one step into the future of Insula Investment Management! We Hope that you will join us on this exciting journey forwards!
Sources:
https://medium.com/enzymefinance/announcing-sulu-enzymes-next-release-roadmap-5c754b8e9f42
https://defireport.io/defi/enzyme-finance-revealed-sulu-launch-plans/