Cryptocurrencies represent an ideological shift and disruption to mainstream finance. For most proponents in the ecosystem, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and technological innovations like decentralized finance offer an alternative model that solves many of the problems that traditional financial systems are plagued with. In such an ecosystem, the promise of self-sovereignty, the lack of censorship, decentralization, etc. are seen as the redemptive qualities of crypto.
On the latest episode of the Epicenter podcast, Ryan Sean Adams, Founder of Mythos Capital, highlighted the importance of decentralization, the ‘bankless’ future of finance, and how it differs from conventional systems at work in the world of finance today. He claimed that decentralization is of paramount importance, arguing,
“The movement is about decentralization. And what I mean by decentralization is changing the structure of power from the few and distributing it to the many. And so I think a self-sovereign money system includes not only money that’s not state-backed at the base layer, but also a banking system.”
Source: DeFi Pulse
For DeFi, 2020 was a monumental year as it crossed the $1 billion mark in terms of total value locked. However, a plummet in value soon followed. At the time of writing, the DeFi ecosystem was trying to catch up and was valued at over $700 million.
A banking system built on top of a base-layer cryptocurrency is akin to innovations such as DeFi, according to Adams. He also highlighted that DeFi and money protocols are the solution for the crypto-ecosystem if it intends on not having the same pitfalls as traditional finance. Adams went on to note,
“As those money protocols develop more and more we’ll have a completely parallel system, I think that replicates the traditional system. But has one key advantage – it’s trustless.”
Source: Ethereum DeFi Value, skew
According to market data from Skew, within the DeFi ecosystem, projects like Synthetix and Compound have enjoyed a favorable month. Since the start of April, Synthetix’s value has risen from $77 million to $109 million, while Compound also registered similar growth in terms of value.
According to Adams, Ethereum and its innovations, with regard DeFi, are a passport to this parallel and trustless system, adding that the vision of DeFi fundamentally involves self-sovereignty. He also highlighted how it is important for crypto not to end up mirroring traditional finance and creating centralized points of authority.
“The point of this whole thing is to go ankles, it’s not to replace the traditional bankers with a new set of like Binance and Coinbase and new banking overlords. The point of this is complete self-sovereign money and a completely self-sovereign parallel financial system and DeFi plays a key role in that in my mind.”