DeFi: Apollo makes strategic investment in Morpho

The suspense was total until the last minute. After more than a year of discussion, US giant Apollo has decided to invest in Morpho, one of DeFi's leading lending protocols.

The final details of the deal were signed on Friday evening.

As soon as it was announced (Morpho blog), the investment attracted the attention of the crypto industry. Under the terms of the deal, the US asset manager - a leader in the institutional segment - will acquire up to 90 million MORPHO tokens, or around 9% of the total in circulation, over the next four years. With this deal, Apollo becomes one of the largest investors in the protocol, alongside Morpho's founding team, Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

An institutional strategy validated

This deal is fully in line with Morpho's "institutional" strategy. By investing heavily, Apollo is validating the protocol's ability to attract professional players and structure products tailored to major financial institutions. Paul Frambot, CEO of Morpho, sums up: "Traditional players have understood DeFi. Some, like Apollo, are now developing strategies and products. Everything is speeding up - it's impressive."

A Morpho investor, off the record, also points out: "They have a great team. This kind of deal gives them a head start on the competition (Aave, editor's note) and validates their strategy in relation to institutional players."

For Apollo, whose Digital Assets strategy is driven by Christine Moy, this deal is a further step in the institutional adoption of DeFi. Interviewed in New York a few months ago, Christine Moy explained that DeFi represented a "paradigm shift" for traditional finance, and this deal translates that vision into a concrete position on the markets.

DeFi: growing institutional adoption

Apollo's move comes in a broader context of institutional interest in DeFi. Two days before the announcement, BlackRock revealed that it would embed its Treasury-backed digital token, BUIDL, on Uniswap, one of the major DeFi platforms, while purchasing an unspecified amount of the UNI token.

These initiatives are indicative of a clear trend: traditional finance is starting to use DeFi for structured transactions, with mechanisms such as whitelists and market makers to secure the deals. According to data from The Big Whale, the total value locked (TVL) on DeFi platforms is now close to $100 billion, illustrating the scale and growing maturity of the market.

The integration of BUIDL on Uniswap, even if limited to accredited investors, serves as a test case for wider adoption and validates DeFi's ability to manage institutional assets. Robert Mitchnick, global head of digital assets at BlackRock, stressed this week that the collaboration is "a notable step in the convergence of tokenised assets and decentralised finance" and that the infrastructure could eventually be extended to consumer products.

Impact on Morpho and Europe

For Morpho, which is headquartered in France, the Apollo announcement represents a strong signal. The MORPHO token reacted immediately, rising more than 10% to around $1.25.

The convergence of Wall Street and DeFi, materialised by Apollo/Morpho and BlackRock/Uniswap, confirms that institutional financial markets now regard DeFi as a serious and scalable infrastructure. With close to $100 billion in TVL and European protocols capable of capturing the attention of global investors, decentralised finance is moving from experimental ground to a strategic sector for the entire market.

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