Thomas Farley, the former president of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), is bullish on the entire growing cryptocurrency industry.

“The only thing I find more exciting than debating on tax policy is talking about crypto. I'm all in, and I think Coinbase (COIN) is a great company,” said Farley in an interview on CNBC.

He then shared how the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, Coinbase is the 8th largest exchange in the world but “if you ask the everyday American they would probably think it's the biggest exchange in the world.”

According to him, the crypto space is “amazing,” notwithstanding the press that it has been getting. In fact, “it's the best-kept secret in the world and maybe the history of the financial markets,” he added.

Farley then went to talk about decentralized finance (DeFi). “There's this corner of crypto called DeFi where essentially very smart Kids are putting code up on a blockchain of their choosing, and then you have a self-operating smart contract,” said Farley.

“DeFi exchanges are doing as much volume if not more than Coinbase today,” he added.

The burgeoning DeFi space is home to DEXs, volume on which went parabolic in Q1 of 2021. Recording as much as $217 billion, volume on decentralized exchanges is up 236% from the previous quarter and a whopping 8,000% from Q1 2020, as per Messari.

While Ethereum-based Uniswap continues to lead the pack, BSC-based PancakeSwap was the winner as its market share grew from a mere 2% to 37% in the quarter.

Farley further notes that this growth has been ignored by traditional competitors like banks along with retail brokerages.

“The wall street banks who for a century have made markets in every asset around the world have ignored this and abdicated their role and allowed Coinbase to become an $80 billion company,” said Farley, adding that as retail brokerages ignored it as well, retail found other ways to access this asset class.

“I think it's fascinating, and I think it's here to stay. We're past the point of no return,” he said.

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