Nomura’s Laser Digital has recently announced a strategic investment in the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, Infinity. Infinity is an Ethereum-based protocol that looks to advance institutional DeFi, or what is referred to as “hybrid finance”. The investment follows Infinity’s $4.2 million seed funding round in September 2022, backed by major crypto market makers and venture capital investors such as Susquehanna International Group, Block0, GSR, OWC, Flow Traders, and CSquared.
Olivier Dang, the Head of Ventures at Laser Digital, commented that Infinity is paving the way for institutional flows to come on-chain. He also noted that the protocol is transforming the space by enabling price discovery and risk management.
Infinity’s founder, Kevin Lepsoe, pointed to the potential of increased institutional flows to DeFi by 2025, particularly given the new BIS guidelines. He also stated that hybrid finance will be huge as crypto centralised finance (CeFi) dwindles.
The upcoming launch of Infinity looks to provide an interoperable protocol for benchmark rates, credit, and counterparty management in order to enable broader participation of institutional players in the DeFi space. This will be especially beneficial considering the $300 trillion market of credit securities across loans, derivatives, and equity available.
