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> People don't want to make their own bread, and they don't want to be their own bank either. But they aren't saying you have to be your own bank, by opening i

> People don't want to make their own bread, and they don't want to be their own bank either. But they aren't saying you have to be your own bank, by opening it all up, more and more people can be "banks" and that helps to decentralize finances from the handful of Big Banks. I'm not saying that random person down the road should be allowed to create a bank that others then trust with storing their assets, and I will still keep the majority of my assets in traditional banks, but as a whole, less power concentrated in the few is better for everyone.

lottin 5y ago
I definitely agree that competition is very important, I don't think there are many doubts about that. I just don't see how DeFi can bring competition to the banking sector by allowing people to become banks. Ordinary people becoming a bank is not realistic competition to actual banks. People have jobs, they have work to do, they have to raise a family, they're not going to become competent bankers on top of that and outcompete professionals, even if they tried.
- jermaustin1 5y ago
  I'm going to preface this with I have no idea how any of this ACTUALLY works, and I'm probably wrong, but the "blockchain" abstracts all the more complicated bits away. I'm not a crypto diehard, and probably never will be. I think they are neat, and I have about 10% of my net worth tied up in a handful of coins. Here is my understanding how we can all be banks without even really thinking about it. Some coins (PoS specifically) allow staking, which allows you to set it aside a certain amount, which is then used to validate other transactions, and you earn rewards. In traditional banking, this is kind of like a CD, and your money is used to help the bank out and it pays you interest on that. The Ethernet (and a few other coins Solana comes to mind) ledger allow for the creation of smart contracts (applications that run on the blockchain) that could (probably some already exist) allow you to automate the creation loans on the ledger, witnessed by the world, that automatically pay you back. You can probably use the smart contract to do a modicum of due diligence on the borrower. But instead of paying SynapseFi (or other but first name that came to mine) thousands a month to allow you to build out loans, its all there for you on the block chain. This probably IS the future of peer2peer lending, as it is already a HUGE industry, and this would kind of get rid of the middle man. One aspect of banking that is not really needed anymore would be the storage of assets. That is a built in part of cryptocurrency. There is still the question of how do you get crypto, and for now, and until more people use it for everyday actives, that requires exchanges. And Exchanges could be seen as a centralization of sorts, but even they are a dime a dozen so they are effectively decentralized. And most support transferring to a wallet. So... kinda decentralized.
  - lottin 5y ago
    The idea that banking activities can be automated and that therefore people will be able to ditch banks and do their own banking without resorting to professional banking services is unreasonable, for the simple reason that if this could be done, banks would have already done it, since they have every incentive to reduce costs. They would have laid off all the staff and replace it with a smart contract. They haven't done it because it can't be done, because banking has processes which are labour-dependent and can't just be automated away easily or at all.
    - landemva 5y ago
      Have you considered if much of this is due to debt-based currency? If people hold valuable fungible tokens, it becomes possible to make collateralized loan products and even synthetic stable tokens such as DAI.
      - lottin 5y ago
        I don't know what you mean by debt-based currency, but no I don't think that using tokens instead of currency changes anything. The process of granting and managing a loan is exactly the same regardless of whether the loan is denominated in currency or in some token.

lottin 5y ago

I definitely agree that competition is very important, I don't think there are many doubts about that. I just don't see how DeFi can bring competition to the banking sector by allowing people to become banks. Ordinary people becoming a bank is not realistic competition to actual banks. People have jobs, they have work to do, they have to raise a family, they're not going to become competent bankers on top of that and outcompete professionals, even if they tried.

jermaustin1 5y ago
I'm going to preface this with I have no idea how any of this ACTUALLY works, and I'm probably wrong, but the "blockchain" abstracts all the more complicated bits away. I'm not a crypto diehard, and probably never will be. I think they are neat, and I have about 10% of my net worth tied up in a handful of coins. Here is my understanding how we can all be banks without even really thinking about it. Some coins (PoS specifically) allow staking, which allows you to set it aside a certain amount, which is then used to validate other transactions, and you earn rewards. In traditional banking, this is kind of like a CD, and your money is used to help the bank out and it pays you interest on that. The Ethernet (and a few other coins Solana comes to mind) ledger allow for the creation of smart contracts (applications that run on the blockchain) that could (probably some already exist) allow you to automate the creation loans on the ledger, witnessed by the world, that automatically pay you back. You can probably use the smart contract to do a modicum of due diligence on the borrower. But instead of paying SynapseFi (or other but first name that came to mine) thousands a month to allow you to build out loans, its all there for you on the block chain. This probably IS the future of peer2peer lending, as it is already a HUGE industry, and this would kind of get rid of the middle man. One aspect of banking that is not really needed anymore would be the storage of assets. That is a built in part of cryptocurrency. There is still the question of how do you get crypto, and for now, and until more people use it for everyday actives, that requires exchanges. And Exchanges could be seen as a centralization of sorts, but even they are a dime a dozen so they are effectively decentralized. And most support transferring to a wallet. So... kinda decentralized.
- lottin 5y ago
  The idea that banking activities can be automated and that therefore people will be able to ditch banks and do their own banking without resorting to professional banking services is unreasonable, for the simple reason that if this could be done, banks would have already done it, since they have every incentive to reduce costs. They would have laid off all the staff and replace it with a smart contract. They haven't done it because it can't be done, because banking has processes which are labour-dependent and can't just be automated away easily or at all.
  - landemva 5y ago
    Have you considered if much of this is due to debt-based currency? If people hold valuable fungible tokens, it becomes possible to make collateralized loan products and even synthetic stable tokens such as DAI.
    - lottin 5y ago
      I don't know what you mean by debt-based currency, but no I don't think that using tokens instead of currency changes anything. The process of granting and managing a loan is exactly the same regardless of whether the loan is denominated in currency or in some token.