Our take on what DeFi means to the world, why it's so important. This is just the beginning....
DeFi: How do you store your value?
DeFi stands for Decentralised Finance. It's a term that has captured the crypto communities heart, and it seems to have stuck. Discussions were had on if the term DopeFi or OpeFi where better but I think DeFi just works.
What does it mean? There's no one clear definition, it will mean different things to different people, right now its a term that is bubbling within the Ethereum community, most projects claiming to be DeFi projects are built on Ethereum.
The projects so far have focused on storing value, creating wrapped tokens, such as DAI, WBTC or SETH, but the fundamental driver behind this is that no fiat currency is engaged in this at this time.
The transfer from fiat to crypto can exist elsewhere and the projects can go about replicating the activity and interactions in a way that is borderless and permissionless.
This is important for the 6 billion unbanked souls on the planet. Smart contract wallets are a huge first step. The wallets from Monolith Tokencard, Gnosis Safe and Argent enable anyone with a mobile phone to easily deploy a digital safe, deposit value and protect that via code and logic. These wallets are gen1, more developments will come, so watch this space.
If you're reading this in 2019, you're probably a techie or a DeFi geek, in the west, with a bank account and a credit line. DeFi is not going to radically change your world just yet, you'll be more excited by Web3, but if you are a refugee, a person that has been refused banking services or someone that hides dollars in a box under your bed then digital smart contract wallets will change your life in the imminent future.
DeFi is not about no rules and attacking governments, it's about creating a ladder so that every family can buy a washing machine.