context: bitcoiner. it is the hardest money and every other attempt to build a digital store of value pales in comparison to it. Smart contracts! Its all absol

context: bitcoiner. it is the hardest money and every other attempt to build a digital store of value pales in comparison to it. Smart contracts! Its all absolutely revolutionary -- but also kinda sketchy. I have been playing with various defi protocols on various EVM based chains, and while it makes money (ideally, you are gaining more value by locking up funds in farms, vaults and pools.) The reality is you are probably either holding a decreasing in value position in a liquidity pool (impermanent loss -- your apples and oranges are worth less in a month, but you end up with more apples and oranges with you withdraw), being issued inflation reward points from a vault (they are printed out of nothing as a reward for locking up funds) or being screwed on deposit, withdraw or 'performance' fees in a pool/farm. Dont get me wrong, there is actual value being created, the trade fees on the Automated Market Making contracts is actually good (eg: ~0.2% per trade * many trades!) It can be much higher than centralized finance can provide at a much highest risk. While the savvy can use this system to buy more bitcoin (which is happily tokenized on EVM chains and convertible back to good ol' [bitcoin] UTXOs), most will probably just lose fiat value equivalency while increasing their holdings in shittokens, all the while thinking they are growing value. The most promising value extract routine at the moment looks to be: * Borrow fiat at low interest rates from cefi (banks) * Convert fiat into stablecoins * Deposit stablecoins into lending platforms * Use stablecoin collateral to borrow at a slightly higher rate (but lower than the bank in step 1) * Deposit borrowed funds as collateral in more lending platforms * Repeat borrow until all collateral is consumed (to your own leverage/risk level). * Deposit in pool/vault and collect 'interest', ideally higher than you are borrowing at. * Last step probably earns the most of all, and will pay for the rest of the steps * Profit! My take on this is that this is just more Wall street fiat money shenanigans, reinvented on public blockchains. Or we could just have hard money -- 21 million coins. No yield, No interest, No inflation of the monetary base, No bs.