The rise of Decentralized Finance ( DEFI ) has been a phenomenon that is hard to ignore. It might be that a glimpse of the promised freedom from the banking structure has finally been spotted in the wild. With interest rates and potential yields in the banking system looking more and more depressing, it wasn’t difficult for DEFI to turn heads. Two central strengths decentralised finance holds in its corner are the range of possible yields one can get from their capital and the fact that, if functioning correctly, the depositor retains the keys to his funds. To go further, double digit APR’s are possible with DEFI and if the “smart contracts” that hold the money are well written, no-one can touch the customers
deposits without their permission, even the owner of the platform.
Non-Fungible Tokens ( NFT ) have boomed in recent years despite being first used years ago. In a nutshell, they are data, held within crypto systems that are 100% impossible to duplicate. The uses for such a system are only now being properly investigated. Some reasons to use NFT’s are already being employed and have resulted in billions of dollars of transactions. Art is an obvious start here, an artist can create something and tag it with his 100% unique crypto identifier. That creation is time stamped and creator stamped and as such cannot be recreated with the same attributes ever again. Even a Picasso or a Van Gogh can be copied by a skilled artist. Now, for the first time in history we have a relatively painless way to prove originality.
Regulation of cryptocurrencies will start to arrive globally as more nations realise they must act and create policy. Countries like China have all but banned bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. India seems undecided in how to deal with it, flip-flopping between various stances. Some countries, such as Portugal, Slovenia and Belarus have essentially made cryptocurrency gains tax-free. Most countries have rushed into legislation that simply bundles such gains into already present tax systems. It is expected that as the platforms continue to grow and attract more capital, countries will be forced to spend more time and resources on ways to regulate the purchase, sale and function of the new asset class. The old days of the “wild-west” feeling of cryptocurrencies might well be numbered.
There will start to be integration into publicly used services where the technicalities of crypto are hidden from the masses.
It has been said for years by many people in the space that when cryptocurrencies hit the mainstream, a lot of people who use them won’t even know they are using them. This appears, at face value, to not make sense. However, it’s starting to happen already. One example of this is in ticketing systems for DJ and live music shows. There is an app called GET Protocol that is testing a crypto ticket system that does not especially reference the crypto system running in the background. The app simply works to provide tickets to users and prevents the ongoing issues that live events have with ticketing, fraud and scalping. How long will it before some banking apps allow their customers to invest some savings in bitcoin or ethereum? They will need no knowledge of cryptocurrencies and access will be as simple as logging into an app they already use. This integration is true adoption.
