DeFi is the killer app for crypto

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, let me just give you one segment from the end:

And if the question is whether crypto is good for anything, there is now at least one clear answer: Crypto enables DeFi. You don’t have to like every consequence of that reality, but a reality it is.

You could say that crypto is a Trojan horse of a new and quite different financial system. If you have ever dealt with U.S. banks, and suffered through their bureaucracy and mediocre software, you might conclude that they are ripe for  disruption. Banks in other countries may be even more vulnerable.

Obviously, as DeFi grows, questions of government oversight and control will come to the fore. Still, it seems unlikely that DeFi institutions will be regulated out of existence. DeFi can be run on platforms outside of the U.S., and American and European regulators cannot shut it down any more than they can prevent me from placing an online bet on a Mexican soccer game.

Keep in mind that significant swaths of the developing world currently use micro-credit, where borrowing rates of interest are often 50% or 100% on an annualized basis. It is likely that some of those countries will experiment with DeFi as an alternative method of credit allocation, regardless of whether those new institutions satisfy U.S. regulators in every regard.

If you are baffled by a lot of DeFi, well … welcome to the club. The confusing and ever-changing nature of DeFi helps explains why the prices of crypto assets are so volatile. If DeFi lies in part behind the demand for crypto, and you don’t know exactly where DeFi is headed, the future for crypto is also highly uncertain. It is very unusual to have such a highly visible window on what is essentially the value of a bunch of startups.

Recommended, and here are some earlier posts by Alex on DeFi.  And here is a new essay on DeFi.