Amid the 125% tariff panic, is DeFi becoming the new safe haven?
The game between the United States and China has once again entered the stage of actual confrontation, with automobile tariffs raised to 125% in one go. This type of tariff war is not new, but this upgraded version has indeed made the capital market feel the typical global resonance pressure again.
The stock, commodity, and bond markets have all seen varying degrees of risk aversion. Meanwhile, the crypto market has not been as dramatic. This got me thinking:
Is DeFi regaining its role as a “safe haven” amid this structural friction?
I used to be reserved about this statement, but now my thoughts are slowly changing. Here are some of my observations and thoughts:
Tax “relaxation” brings certainty to DeFi
In March, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution that is very friendly to DeFi users:
Temporarily overturn the IRS requirement for on-chain protocols to report user transactions.
This is actually a very important signal. Although it cannot be fully understood as tax exemption, it means that the tax compliance pressure of on-chain interactions has been alleviated in the short term.
This releases a subtle but critical window: users can rebuild confidence in on-chain asset allocation in an environment with less regulatory friction.
To me, this is just like how international capital used offshore markets as a “low-friction channel” in the past, and DeFi is likely taking on the prototype of this role.
Structural benefits are the logic that deserves more attention at this stage
The greater the market uncertainty, the more funds tend to seek structurally certain paths - even if the returns are not that high.
This is why staking products are beginning to gain attention again. You stake your assets on the mainnet and receive rewards at the protocol layer. The logic is clear, the path is predictable, and the volatility is relatively low.
Especially in an ecosystem like Avalanche, on-chain staked tokens (such as sAVAX) can continue to participate in other DeFi activities, such as lending or liquidity mining. In this way, users retain the benefits of staking without completely sacrificing liquidity.
This actually forms an on-chain logic that is closer to structural financial management:
The income comes from the basic protocol, and the risks are concentrated in the main network security and DeFi contract layer. The paths and expectations are reusable and traceable.
When compliance expectations are unclear, on-chain transparency becomes a moat
No one knows how taxes will be collected and regulated in the future, but one thing is certain: protocols with complete on-chain records and clear structures will definitely have greater long-term viability than those grayscale operations.
BENQI, which I have been paying attention to recently, is not a hit project, but its path is very standard:
Users pledge AVAX → obtain sAVAX → which can then be used for mortgage, lending, and liquidity pools. The entire asset path is traceable and contract behavior is public, which is very friendly to future compliance.
This combination of structurality + transparency is actually a moat at the current stage. You may not be able to get super high returns immediately, but you can get stability in the time dimension.
The way of structural combination is changing from tool collage to asset allocation system
In the past, many people used DeFi to “find tools for arbitrage”, but today more and more people are building “asset structures”.
For example:
You stake AVAX to get sAVAX;
Borrow stablecoins using sAVAX as collateral;
Use stablecoins for liquidity mining or participate in on-chain RWA projects;
Finally, this structure will automatically compound interest.
The whole path is not complicated, but what lies behind it is no longer speculative behavior, but a structural return model on the chain, which can even be compared to actively managed portfolio assets.
From this perspective, DeFi is slowly moving away from the impression of “high risk and high volatility” and evolving into a more mature financial tool.
This is a stage where it is worthwhile to seriously build an “on-chain structure”
My current attitude towards DeFi is:
It is not a window period for huge profits, but it may be the most worthwhile stage to build structure and accumulate positions before the next round of slow bull market starts.
If you believe that macro uncertainty will persist;
If you don’t want to put all your assets in high volatility assets;
If you hope that in the future, taxation, compliance, and on-chain revenue can be gradually connected to a system——
Then, building a structural income portfolio on the chain may be an action worth starting.
BENQI and sAVAX are not necessarily the optimal solutions, but their paths and mechanisms do have the characteristics of being explainable, combinable, and iterable, and can become part of this structural experiment.
We don’t know when the next cycle will come, but it is never the wrong direction to start building the structure now.
