Gemini's $500 million new investor, see how new investor MakerDAO profits big from real assets

The U.S. compliant exchange Gemini has suspended withdrawals for its yield product "Gemini Earn" since 11/16, and the platform went into maintenance mode in December, which has not been resolved to date. In fact, since November, the decentralized stablecoin protocol MakerDAO has quietly become a major stakeholder of Gemini, holding 86% of its stablecoin GUSD, totaling nearly $500 million. How does MakerDAO, the major stakeholder, continue to generate revenue from real assets and outperform its competitors to maintain profits in the harsh year of 2022?

Collaboration with MakerDAO

The stablecoin GUSD issued by Gemini has been collaborating with the decentralized stablecoin protocol MakerDAO since October last year, providing liquidity and returns for its GUSD stablecoin through the Peg Stability Module, PSM. According to data from Dune, starting from November last year, MakerDAO held nearly 500 million GUSD, accounting for 86% of the total GUSD issuance of 575,922,283, making MakerDAO a major stakeholder in Gemini.

Note: PSM is a fixed-price token swap protocol based on Dai. For example, with the USDC PSM, users can mint new Dai at a 1:1 ratio with USDC.

According to the agreement, Gemini is required to pay MakerDAO a 1.25% annualized return rate each month. According to official Twitter data from MakerDAO, Gemini paid interest of $480,000 last month.

MakerDAO Expanding into Real-World Assets

Despite the DeFi winter of 2022, MakerDAO's decentralized community quietly manages over $7.2 billion in assets and actively increases revenue through partnerships and alliances in real-world assets.

In addition to the previously reported collaboration between Coinbase and Gemini, MakerDAO partnered with the blockchain investment firm BlockTower Credit at the end of last year for a $220 million fund. These assets were initiated by BlockTower and issued on-chain through Centrifuge. MakerDAO provided $150 million, and BlockTower provided $70 million in funding, making it the first institutional credit fund to bring collateralized lending business on-chain. At current market prices, it can earn approximately 5.25-5.75% interest.

In July 2022, MakerDAO invested in Euro-denominated collateralized bonds issued by the third largest bank in France, Crédit Industriel et Commercial (CIC). MakerDAO can provide up to 30 million DAI in loans to CIC's digital asset subsidiary FORGE.

As shown in the chart below, even during the crypto winter of 2022, MakerDAO outperformed Coinbase, Circle, and others, maintaining a profit of $9.28 million for the year.