[mrharrison]

I have been in the blockchain space for about three years, and there is an explosion in tech and innovation in the last six months. Visa, Mastercard etc... are integrating, bank regulators now allow banks to connect to public networks. It just astounds me sometimes how people can be so confident in a review of a platform type and done so little research. I urge you to take a second look. Blockchain is primed to disrupt the financial industry.

[ashtonkem]

I find it very entertaining how suddenly Visa is a good thing, the moment they wanted to offer a crypto card. All this after how many articles decrying Visa and other “legacy” financial institutions?

Also, the idea that Visa is going to help the Blockchain finally scale is ... well, let’s just say that you’re not supposed to enthusiastically endorse what the detractors have been saying for years.

[hanniabu]

It's a stepping stone to create adoption.

[AngrySkillzz]

Where "creating adoption" means "hopefully the price of the speculative assets I own goes up"

[mrharrison]

Yes, I went from Coinbase to managing my own wallet. Coinbase was my stepping stone, but now with my own wallet I have access to so many other products without Coinbase taking a fee and products that Coinbase doesn't offer. Coinbase helped me understand what was possible, now I have graduated to liquidity pools, staking and DEX's.

[mrharrison]

Weird how I got so many minus points for an actual experience.

[rrrazdan]

Disrupt but how? Can you point to a specific example or use case?

[mrharrison]

More transparent than the opaque financial industry. You as a user completely own your assets, with your public key. Yes blockchain wallets/public keys are bad UX, but at the same time they give you actual ownership of your securities/index funds. A person can have access to the same financial products that banks have access to, because they cost a fraction of a price to run then they normally do on CEX and instead of waiting for 3 days for a transaction to complete, it completes in 5 minutes. I could go on and on... Essentially blockchain makes financial products faster, cheaper and more accessible. No middlemen involved and a transparent audit trail.

[UncleMeat]

> You as a user completely own your assets, with your public key.

Cool. Why is this a thing tons of people want?

> A person can have access to the same financial products that banks have access to, because they cost a fraction of a price to run then they normally do on CEX and instead of waiting for 3 days for a transaction to complete, it completes in 5 minutes.

Which financial products? How many people want those things?

For BTC to disrupt the financial industry I'd expect there to be a huge number of people who want its features over the alternative. But where are they? Where are the billions of people who want to manage the storage of their own wealth or trade derivatives daily?

[mrharrison]

They don't know they want it, till they know what it means. It means independence from central exchanges, it means the money in your savings account of .01% interest account can now be directly leveraged by loans on Aave, which return 5-9% interest. No middleman managing your money. Your assets can be directly accessed by people who need it.

[AngrySkillzz]

Defi loans are not actually useful though. You overcollateralize 150% of your ETH or whatever, to get say 100% back in some stablecoin.

But you could have just sold the ETH in the first place...? If it truly is a "currency" then why are you taking a currency loan on your currency? That's like putting up $150 of collateral to get a $100 loan, it makes no sense.

Unless it's not a currency, in which case this is just a margin loan - I think my speculative asset is going to go up in price, so I will take out a loan against it instead of selling it. Which has only two use cases: I need the dollars and I'm avoiding paying capital gains, OR I want this margin loan to speculate on more cryptocurrency!

That's a pretty small use case compared to like, "loans" in general. Plus if/when the ETH/USD price crashes, all of these loans will get liquidated and push the price down further. I fully expect a "portfolio insurance"-Black Monday type crash if ETH ever falls by more than 30%.

[mrharrison]

Web3 is definitely the new wild west of the internet. I agree there will be wild price swings, but it will stabilize as more people are onboarded.

[nradov]

I don't think you understand the relationship between interest rates and risk. The reason that bank savings accounts have low interest rates is that they are zero risk (FDIC). Any asset class with a 5-9% expected return carries a substantial risk of losing you principal. In other words, sometimes borrowers default.

[BlackInkstoan]

DEXs and PLFs still lack integration into the traditional finance infrastructure. Outside of escrowed p2p sales of cryptocurrency, centralized exchanges are the only FIAT on and off ramps.

If stablecoins, custodial or noncustodial gain widespread adoption, DeFi will remain as a niche for hardcore crypto fans.

[selestify]

> If stablecoins, custodial or noncustodial gain widespread adoption, DeFi will remain as a niche for hardcore crypto fans.

Why? It seems the exact opposite to be — if stablecoins gain widespread adoption, there will be a lot more exposure to DeFi because you have stablecoins already and can directly partake in DeFi.

Right now the biggest hurdle is fiat -> crypto conversions and back, stablecoin or not. If you already have stablecoin because it’s widely used, then that won’t be a problem anymore.

[dmitriid]

> A person can have access to the same financial products that banks have access to

Like reverting transactions? Handling of disputes? Fraud detection?

> Essentially blockchain makes financial products faster, cheaper and more accessible.

You literally mentioned bad UX just a few sentences ago? How that makes it more accessible than existing systems?

Cheaper? What's the transaction cost at any given moment in time?

Faster? Credit card transactions are instant these days, have no fluctuating costs, and carry an added benefit of, you know, customer and seller protections.

[kergonath]

Anytime now. We’ve been told the revolution was around the corner for years.

[mrharrison]

It turned into a 1 trillion dollar market three weeks ago. DeFi has been on an upward trend for the past 6 months. It is happening. Banks were just allowed in January to start interacting with public blockchains, so give that a year. The regulatory walls are dropping and accessibility is increasing with the likes of Visa and Mastercard.