Crypto Die-Hards Built a $90 Billion Wall Street on the Internet

Money manager Vladimir Vishnevskiy can earn a negative interest rate for holding a European government bond. Or he can pocket the annual equivalent of a 20% yield for locking money up in one of the wilder corners of the crypto market, known as decentralized finance, or DeFi.

He decided to go for the 20%. “You can’t get those yields in the traditional space,” says the co-founder of Swiss-based St. Gotthard Fund Management, which runs a portfolio designed to squeeze income out of crypto assets. The strategy is so new that even Wall Street pros may have trouble wrapping their heads ...