Could DeFi grow to become a more exciting prospect for global finance than Bitcoin? Decentralized finance applications are growing with the power to create wealth for billions of people around the world built on a revolutionary framework that could ultimately replace banks and other financial institutions.
With the numerous platforms and projects that offer the kinds of low-interest rates that banks wouldn’t dare consider as well as borrowing, lending, margin trading and investing, DeFi has laid the foundations for the world of cryptocurrencies to finally realise its potential and deliver universal access to a financial system free of corruption and silos.
What is DeFi?
DeFi stands for decentralized finance, and its primary goal is to offer universal access to traditional financial services by providing a working model that features a borderless, permissionless and uncensored financial ecosystem built on blockchain technology.
Traditional financial applications like lending, borrowing, trading, payments and insurance can be generated through smart contracts and executed by specialist Decentralized Applications (DApps) to create a fully peer-to-peer financial system.
With the arrival of DeFi, people have access to financial services while retaining full control of their financial assets. Since most of the code used by DApps are in Ethereum smart contracts, they can be accessed and viewed by anyone - generating full transparency.
The main application of DeFi revolves around investors depositing their digital currencies into smart contracts - which are untamperable and built to be automatically executed once a set of pre-determined conditions are met - and when someone borrows the money, they earn interest. Essentially, the smart contracts can connect borrowers and lenders while intelligently allocating the interest accrued.
As we can see from the chart above, DeFi adoption exploded in the summer of 2020 and has seen significant investment pumped into its many applications moving into 2021.
The Path to Mainstream Adoption
DeFi has the potential to go further with blockchain technology than cryptocurrencies. This is because it promises a fully open, peer-to-peer financial system that focuses on including those why otherwise have little-to-no access to traditional financial markets.
(Image: DeFi Pulse)
According to DeFi Pulse, the total value locked in DeFi platforms has already surpassed $25 billion US dollars - a mind-boggling figure considering it wasn’t until August 2020 that we saw DeFi surpass the $5bn mark. This indicates that the former sub-sector has now made itself known to mainstream financial institutions.
Naturally, as the space grows alongside its various use cases, it’s logical that we’ll see DeFi become an increasingly dominant talking point not only in cryptocurrency financial circles but that of traditional finance, too.
Diverse Applications
The relationship between DeFi and cryptocurrencies is close, after all, it could be argued that Bitcoin was the first DApp. As an application, it enabled users to lend their computing power to verify transactions and ‘mine’ more coins - which could subsequently be stored independently without passing through a centralized institution. From the early cryptocurrencies, the DApp ecosystem has expanded significantly as more developers create financial products to attract users.
The next big ‘killer app’ in fintech could theoretically already exist within the DApps ecosystem. Success will come down to the teams that can best execute on a proven idea that has the runway for growth. While many apps are centered around lending and borrowing, there is plenty more that can be done within this ecosystem.
With half of the UK struggling to pay their bills, DeFi will undoubtedly continue to challenge traditional financial systems in their entirety. Where traditional finance would require users to consult with banks to broker loans or create debt management plans, decentralized finance applications can automatically generate smart contracts where sums are transferred between lenders and borrowers at much more generous rates without any centralized power taking a share for themselves. The possibilities in terms of managing debt, utilizing loans and generating wealth are virtually limitless.
Each time the DeFi ecosystem develops a viable decentralized alternative to existing applications, it registers a new challenger to traditional finance.
The Power to Challenge the Status Quo
DeFi doesn’t only pack the power to challenge the established status quo of the current financial system, it also creates a wide range of new possibilities that have never truly existed for citizens around the world before.
DApps are globally available and transparent, they remove the need for reliance on central banks and governments and increase the level of access that people have to their finances. DeFi doesn’t rely on third-parties or intermediaries and operates purely on a peer-to-peer basis.
No companies or employees manage DeFi because of the intelligence of the smart contracts deployed on the blockchain, so there’s no meddling from centralized forces.
Decentralized finance has the power to change how money works, and we can expect it to result in greater levels of financial inclusivity and transparency for everyone.
All views and opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and not FXStreet. Trading cryptocurrencies or related products involves risk. This is not an endorsement to invest in or trade any of the cryptocurrencies, stocks or companies mentioned in this article.
Recommended Content
Editors’ Picks
Prisma price tanks 25% after nearly $9 million exploit
Prisma Finance (PRISMA) is being exploited, and the attacker has so far pulled $9 million in Ethereum from the borrowing protocol. Prisma asked vault owners to take the necessary steps to protect funds from the ongoing attack in an official tweet on X.
Meme coins gain traction after SEC’s partial win in Coinbase lawsuit: DOGE, SHIB, BRETT, POPCAT, BODEN
US SEC pocketed a partial win in its lawsuit against Coinbase, ushering a correction in crypto prices on Thursday. Despite the broad pullback, prices of meme coins like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and Solana-based BRETT, POPCAT and BODEN increased.
Ondo moves $95 million worth of OUSG assets to BUIDL as tokenized fund attracts $245 million since debut
Ondo Finance (ONDO) announced on Wednesday that it's shifting about $95 million worth of its OUSG's underlying assets to the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL).
XRP price stuck below $0.65 resistance, Ripple lawsuit could suffer from Coinbase defeat
XRP price falls slightly to $0.61 on Thursday after its landmark programmatic sales ruling in July, which gave Ripple a partial victory against the US SEC, failed to reverberate in a similar legal battle between the regulator and crypto exchange Coinbase.
Bitcoin: BTC may have recovered, but is it out of the woods?
Bitcoin’s (BTC) upward momentum has shown a significant decline for the past two weeks or so. This development led to a bearish signal on the weekly and an uncertain outlook on the monthly.