What is DeFi?
Can I use it to earn interest on my cryptocurrency holdings?
Is it risky?
And will it really change the future of finance as we know it?
Well, stick around.
Here on Crypto Whiteboard Tuesday,
we’ll tackle these questions and more.
Hi, I’m Nate Martin from 99Bitcoins.com
and welcome to Crypto Whiteboard Tuesday
where we take complex cryptocurrency topics,
break them down and translate them into plain English.
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Today’s topic is decentralized finance, or DeFi for short.
If you’ve watched our previous videos
you already know that Bitcoin is a form of money
that isn’t controlled by any central bank or government.
It can be transferred to anyone from anyone around the world,
without the need of a bank or a financial institution.
Bitcoin is decentralized money,
and if you’re just starting out
you may want to catch our “What is Bitcoin” video
before moving forward.
However, transferring money is only the first of many building blocks
in a financial system.
Aside from sending money to one another,
there are a variety of services we use today.
For example, loans, saving plans, insurance and stock markets
are all services that are built around money
and together create our financial system.
Today, our financial system and all its services
are completely centralized.
Banks, stock markets, insurance companies
and other financial institutions all have someone in charge,
whether it be a company or a person,
that controls and offers these services.
This centralized financial system, or CeFi for short, has its risks -
mismanagement, fraud and corruption to name a few.
But what if we could decentralize the financial system as a whole
in the same way Bitcoin decentralized money?
That’s exactly what DeFi is all about.
DeFi is a term given to financial services
that have no central authority or someone in charge.
Using decentralized money, like certain cryptocurrencies,
that can also be programmed for automated activities,
we can build exchanges, lending services, insurance companies
and other organizations that don’t have any owner
and aren’t controlled by anyone.
Confused?
Don’t worry, we’ll break it down for you…
In order to create a decentralized financial system,
the first thing we need is an infrastructure
for programming and running decentralized services.
Luckily for us, Ethereum does just that.
Ethereum is a Do It Yourself platform for writing decentralized programs
also known as decentralized apps or Dapps.
Our “What is Ethereum” video explains Ethereum in great detail,
but for now we’ll just say that through the use of Ethereum
we can write automated code, also known as smart contracts,
that manage any financial service we’d like to create
in a decentralized manner.
This means that we determine the rules as to how a certain service will work,
and once we deploy those rules on the Ethereum network
we no longer have control over them - they are immutable.
Once we have a system in place
like Ethereum for creating decentralized apps
we can start building our decentralized financial system.
Now let’s take a look at some of the building blocks that comprise it.
The first thing any financial system needs is of course money.
You may be thinking:
“why not use Bitcoin or Ether, which is Ethereum’s currency?”
Well, as for Bitcoin, while it is indeed decentralized,
it has only very basic programmable functionality
and is not compatible with the Ethereum platform.
Ether, on the other hand, is compatible and programmable,
however it is also highly volatile.
If we’re looking to build reliable financial services
that people will want to use
we’ll need a more stable currency to operate within this system.
This is where stablecoins come in.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies
that are pegged to the value of a real world asset,
usually some major currency like the US dollar.
Our video “What are stablecoins” explains in more detail
how stablecoins are created
and what the different types of stablecoin pegs are.
Make sure to check it out if you want some additional information.
For the purpose of DeFi
we’ll want to use a stablecoin that doesn’t use fiat money reserves
for maintaining a peg,
since this will require some sort of central authority.
This is where DAI comes into play.
DAI is a decentralized cryptocurrency
pegged against the value of the US dollar,
meaning one DAI equals one US dollar.
Unlike other popular stablecoins
whose value is backed directly by US Dollar reserves,
DAI is backed by crypto collaterals
that can be viewed publicly on the Ethereum blockchain.
DAI is over collateralized,
meaning if you lock up in a deposit $1 worth of Ether,
you can borrow 66 cents worth of DAI.
As soon as you want your Ether back,
just pay back the DAI you borrowed and the Ether will be released.
If you don’t have any Ether to lock up as collateral
you can just buy DAI on an exchange.
Because DAI is over collateralized,
even if Ether’s price becomes extremely volatile,
the value of the locked Ether backing the DAI in circulation
will most likely still remain at 100% or more.
In essence, the DAI stablecoin is actually also a smart contract
that resides on the Ethereum platform.
This makes DAI a truly trustless and decentralized stablecoin
which cannot be shut down nor censored,
hence it’s a perfect form of money for other DeFi services.
Now that our decentralized financial system
has stable decentralized money,
it’s time to create some additional services.
The first use case that we’ll discuss is the decentralized exchange,
or DEX for short.
DEXes operate according to a set of rules,
or smart contracts,
that allow users to buy, sell, or trade cryptocurrencies.
Just like DAI they also reside on the Ethereum platform
which means they operate without a central authority.
When you trade on a DEX, there is no exchange operator,
no sign-ups, no identity verification, and no withdrawal fees.
Instead, the smart contracts enforce the rules, execute trades,
and securely handle funds when necessary.
Also, unlike a centralized exchange,
there’s often no need to deposit funds into an exchange account
before conducting a trade.
This eliminates the major risk of exchange hacking
which exists for all centralized exchanges.
But the range of decentralized financial services doesn’t stop there.
Let’s move on to decentralized money markets -
services that connect borrowers with lenders.
Compound is an Ethereum based borrowing and lending dapp,
meaning you can lend your crypto out and earn interest on it.
Alternatively,
maybe you need some money to pay the rent or buy groceries,
but the only funds you have are cryptocurrencies.
If that’s the case you can deposit your crypto as collateral,
and borrow against it.
The Compound platform automatically connects the lenders with borrowers,
enforces the terms of the loans, and distributes the interest.
The process of earning interest on cryptocurrencies
has become extremely popular lately, giving rise to “yield farming” -
A term given to the effort of putting crypto assets to work
while seeking to generate the most returns possible.
You can take a look at the description below this video
for some of the more exciting DeFi projects
that you can start using today.
So we have decentralized stablecoins, decentralized exchanges
and decentralized money markets.
How about decentralized insurance?
All of these new financial products definitely entail some risks
which we will cover shortly,
so why not create a service that insures my funds
in case something goes wrong?
Well, how about a decentralized platform
that connects people who are willing to pay for insurance
with people who are willing to insure them for a premium,
while everything happens autonomously without any insurance company
or agent in the middle.
DeFi services work in conjunction with one another,
making it possible to mix and match different services
to create new and exciting opportunities.
This kind of resembles how you can use different LEGO blocks
and get creative with whatever it is you want to build.
Hence the term ‘money legos’ has been coined to refer to DeFi services.
For example, you can build the following service
from different money legos -
You start out by using a decentralized exchange aggregator
to find the exchange with the best rate
for swapping Ether for DAI.
You then select the DEX you want and conduct the trade.
Then you lend the DAI you received to borrowers to earn interest.
Finally, you can add insurance to this process
to make sure you’re covered in case anything goes wrong.
That’s just one example out of the many opportunities DeFi offers.
By now you can probably imagine what advantages DeFi presents.
Transparency, interoperability, decentralization,
free for all services and flexible user experience,
to name just a few.
However there are also some risks you should be aware of.
The most important risk is that DeFi is still in its infancy
and this means that things can go wrong.
Smart contracts have had issues in the past
where people didn’t define the rules for certain services correctly
and hackers found creative ways to exploit existing loopholes
in order to steal money.
If you decide to test out any of the existing DeFi services,
make sure to do it with an amount of money
you can afford to lose in case anything goes wrong.
Additionally, you should remember that a system is decentralized
only as its most central component.
This means that some services may be only partially decentralized
while still keeping some centralized aspects
that can act as an achilles heel.
It’s important to understand exactly how a product or service works
before investing in it
so you can be aware of any issues that may come up.
To sum it up,
it seems that the DeFi revolution has reached its early adopter stage
and the coming years will tell
if it manages to cross the chasm into mainstream adoption.
There’s no doubt that a decentralized financial system
can benefit a huge portion of the population
that currently suffers from financial discrimination,
high fees and inefficiencies in managing their funds.
That’s it for today’s episode of Crypto Whiteboard Tuesday.
Hopefully by now you understand what DeFi is -
a term given for a variety of decentralized financial services
that aim to replace our current centralized financial system.
You may still have some questions.
If so, just leave them in the comment section below.
And if you want to take a look
at some of the more popular DeFi services in the works today
just check out the list in the description below.
Finally, if you’re watching this video on YouTube,
and enjoy what you’ve seen,
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Thanks for joining me here at the Whiteboard.
For 99bitcoins.com, I’m Nate Martin,
and I’ll see you…in a bit.