In recent years, the term decentralized finance (DeFi) has proliferated across the internet. Spreading from an obscure Telegram group chat to the force it is today, its meteoric rise might spell the end of the global financial system as we know it.
The Development of Decentralized Finance
The term DeFi was first used in August 2018 in one of Telegram's more impressive private group chats. Notable Ethereum developers, including Blake Henderson of 0x, Inje Yeo of Set Protocol, and Brendan Forster of Dharma, were discussing developments on the network and decided it was time to officially name a growing subculture of dApps that aimed to decentralize finance.
Naturally, this is what the developers called it, or DeFi for short, which phonetically (Defy) encapsulates what they intended to do.
The defiance of centralized intermediaries sums up nicely the implicit mission of any DeFi protocol; they all play a part in chipping away at the stranglehold centralized finance has on global capital.
MakerDAO, which launched in December of 2017, is accepted to be the original DeFi protocol. Offering lending and borrowing with stable coins, it introduced the world to the first scalable alternative to centralized, bank-intermediated finance.
Since then, a bonafide ecosystem has blossomed, bringing with it a whole crop of innovative protocols. They have since improved on MakerDao's lending and expanded DeFi to include new niches. Beyond borrowing, lending, and investing, DeFi now includes decentralized money exchanges, derivatives and options trading, synthetic asset creation, automatic payment streaming, digital wallets, asset management platforms, analytics, and insurance.
The brilliance of DeFi is that it cuts out the middleman and replaces it with code, or blockchain smart contracts. By using DeFi, lenders, borrowers, and investors can make the most out of their capital without sacrificing value to intermediaries.
The appeal of this has gone far from unnoticed; despite being only a couple of years old, the DeFi army has grown to include over one million users, at a total valuation that exceeded one-hundred billion dollars as of April 2021.
As DeFi continues to scale, the promise of a more efficient and democratic money system becomes a more likely reality. To the current global financial complex, this represents an unprecedented threat.
The Current Global Financial System is Flawed
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
Sixty-four years after Henry Ford said it, the revolution has finally come.
True of the money and banking complex, inefficient systems live on borrowed time. Hide as they might behind complexity, and fight as they might with legislation, inevitably progress always wins. To understand why DeFi represents finance's next great leap forward, it's important to look at the current system's deficiencies.
Despite what the financial class advertises, the central questions of finance- of which there are two- are rather straightforward; understanding them, as Ford said, is the first step in the oncoming revolution.
What is Money?
Money is a tool for trading human time, represented as either a good or service. Honest trade creates the opportunity for specialization, competition, and the growth of a market in which value can be rewarded based on merit. In a nutshell, this describes capitalism.
Who Controls Money?
Banks control money because they control its scarcity and, therefore, its value. They don't do so through competition, like the rest of the market, but due to an internationally mandated monopoly. It works like this: At the top, a loose collection of transnational regulatory bodies meet behind closed doors to orchestrate macro-financial policy. They dictate rules to national central banks like the Federal Reserve or The European Central Bank. Going further down the hierarchy, government central banks directly legislate monetary supply through commercial banks, distributing funds out to the retail market.
DeFi innovators believe it's time to replace centralized finance with a decentralized alternative - one made by the people, for the people.
EQIBank Embraces Change Instead of Resisting It
As Bitcoin and other DeFi alternatives continue to grow in popularity and displace capital previously-stored in centralized finance, EQIBank has decided to embrace innovation instead of denying it.
In an act of industry-leading pioneership, EQIBank is the world's first licensed and regulated online bank to dive into DeFi. It powers EQIFI, a suite of decentralized financial products that aim to further expand wealth creation tools to the general public.
Namely, holders of EQIFi’s native token, EQX, will gain access to EQIFI’s first batch of offerings, including fixed and variable rate products, interest rate swaps, and an automatic yield farming aggregator. Also, through lending its infrastructure to DeFi, EQIBank will be able to make its loans, custody, debit and credit cards, OTC, and wealth management tools more accessible and integrated into the decentralized economy.
To stay updated on all things EQIFI, follow the official twitter and telegram. EQX token launch updates will be posted there first.