Crypto-enthusiast Chris MacDonald and Fool.com Editor Eric Bleeker discuss why Pancakeswap (CAKE -1.73%) provides a passive income opportunity that may be too good to ignore, on this episode of "The Crypto Show" from Backstage Pass, recorded on Nov. 10.
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Eric Bleeker: Let's get into the last one we're going to cover today which is PancakeSwap.
This is the 44th largest crypto, it's got a $4.7 billion market cap at the decentralized exchange, built on finance smart chain instead of Ethereum. It's up about 30 fold since the beginning of the year. That's a lot of momentum.
What's interesting about PancakeSwap and what's leading to all this momentum?
Chris MacDonald: I think we're definitely seeing a lot of interest flowing into the DeFi space, decentralized finance space. One of the big components of that are decentralized exchanges.
PancakeSwap is similar to a lot of other decentralized exchanges, such as Uniswap (UNI 1.64%) or SushiSwap (SUSHI -0.56%) that I know we've covered in the past. The difference is it's, like you mentioned, based on the Binance Smart Chain, and so that provides some unique advantages.
There are some drawbacks as well. Binance itself is not without issues. There is a probe by the Department of Justice into Binance in general. There are some risks with it, but the advantages probably outweigh the risks.
Looking at cost, specifically, Ethereum (ETH -1.01%) based decentralized exchanges are beholden to gas fees on the network. Binance is a lot different in that regard. The fees are a lot lower. PancakeSwap, someone who goes on there to swap their tokens will pay a fee of around a quarter of a percent, which is pretty attractive right now. For those who use Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges, they'll know that's a pretty good rate. These are among the most competitive rates in the business.
This is driving a lot of attention to PancakeSwap and a lot of liquidity as well within the network. One of the statistics that really popped out to me is it boasts the largest number of daily users of any dApp and the fourth highest in market volume. That's pretty incredible. In addition to that, it's got pretty incredible wallet integration with various popular wallets whereas other exchanges might not offer that, so the high daily volume liquidity of this platform.
Then the other thing I think that's really important with PancakeSwap to talk about is the passive income potential with this decentralized exchange. When a user stakes CAKE, which is the native token, of the PancakeSwap decentralized exchange on a Syrup Pool, which-- I love the naming convention. [laughs] Anyway, when it's staked on a Syrup Pool, there are 16 tokens available for staking. The most staked pool, Auto CAKE, returns an annual percentage yield of around 72 percent, which is pretty incredible. [laughs] And there are actually pools with greater rewards available.
Now, if you stake a more speculative token on any decentralized exchange, there's always the risk that it goes to zero and you earn 72 percent yield on something that is worthless. These are usually on higher-risk, more speculative tokens but it's still, for investors looking at yield farming or creating passive income through staking, PancakeSwap is definitely a very intriguing decentralized exchange to consider right now for sure.
