Cryptocurrency has converted another veteran of Wall Street after ex-Morgan Stanley executive Kevin Lepsoe launched a new platform for decentralized finance (DeFi). His new firm, Infinity Exchange, received a nice injection of seed funding in a bid to boost DeFi adoption among institutions. In his pledge to help build “DeFi 2.0,” Lepsoe described one of the biggest pain points of DeFi 1.0 — and it’s one you probably haven’t heard of. As it turns out, if you want institutions to adopt your products and services, you need to give them a product suite they’re familiar with. Until then, DeFi offers a value proposition that’s obscured by risk and inefficiency.

This week’s Crypto Biz newsletter explores Lepsoe’s solution to the perils of DeFi. We also dissect the latest news involving MicroStrategy and Fireblocks.

Lepsoe’s Infinity Exchange raised $4.2 million to continue building its institutional fixed income protocol, which introduces the concept of a floating rate with a zero-bid offer. In other words, Infinity Exchange is trying to bring the interest rate mechanics and risk management practices of traditional finance to DeFi. According to Lepsoe, providing institutional investors with access to a full rates product suite, including fixed-to-floating rates, could be the key to boosting DeFi adoption. Although most of us know about DeFi’s boom-and-bust cycles, Lepsoe said the sector’s biggest challenge is the disconnect between floating rate and fixed-rate markets. Not exactly intuitive, but it’s a compelling take, nonetheless.

Michael Saylor’s business intelligence firm MicroStrategy plans to buy a lot more Bitcoin (BTC), which, at this point, should surprise nobody. In a recent filing with the United States Securities and