Alpha Finance Lab, a DeFi ecosystem, today announced the first project of its Alpha Launchpad program – Beta Finance, a permissionless money market protocol to lend, borrow, and short crypto-assets.
Beta Finance aims to offset crypto volatility and bring about market stability through a short-selling tool coupled with a permissionless money market. The Alpha Finance Lab team chose Beta Finance for incubation as it believes the platform is a critical piece of financial infrastructure to bring about market stability; a product offering that is needed and lacking in DeFi.
Alpha Launchpad + Beta Finance
In traditional finance, short-selling, or borrowing the asset to sell immediately at the inflated value and buying it back at a more reasonable value; has been adopted prominently as a counterforce to offset market volatility by traders, financial institutions, and banks. This mitigates the overly upward pressure and allows the market to function more efficiently.
With Beta Finance, DeFi users will be able to short any crypto asset simply with just a click of a button. Beta will borrow tokens from users looking to short on Beta money markets, and carry out the short position for users. On the other hand, holders of any crypto tokens may create a money market on Beta to lend and get high lending APYs in return.
This comes at a time in which users cannot short the crypto assets they want to short; as these assets are not supported by any existing money market in DeFi. Even if the shorted asset is supported by an existing money market; Beta will remove the need for users to interact with various DeFi protocols and paying gas fees on multiple transactions.
The elevated price volatility ever-present in the current crypto market landscape causes unpredictability. The precariousness of token prices that climb exponentially within a short period of time leaves investors vulnerable to huge price exposure, and Alpha believes the short-selling feature of Beta will fit in perfectly.
“Alpha Launchpad’s incubator program was set up to ultimately grow the Alpha Universe; and bring more value accrual to ALPHA stakers by incubating key building blocks of DeFi, with the first being Beta Finance. The support and guidance provided by Alpha through the Alpha Launchpad will act as a catalyst for DeFi teams to push their projects forward; be it in terms of product-market fit, tech work, and even fund-raising strategies.”
– The Alpha Finance Lab Team
Interested DeFi teams can check out the Alpha Launchpad application process here.