DeFi vs the World - The Daily Gwei #259
The real enemy is centralization.
This may be hard to believe but before I discovered Ethereum and DeFi, I had never cared about my personal finances beyond how much money I had in my bank account. I also had never used traditional finance services to take out a loan, purchase equities or play around with more exotic products like derivatives. With DeFi, I have done all of this and begun caring much more deeply about my personal finances.
People in the crypto ecosystem refer to the existing global financial system by many names such as BoomerFi, TradFi (traditional finance) and CeFi (centralized finance). In particular terms like ‘BoomerFi’ are meant to mock the existing system as being old, frail, slow and dying - something that DeFi is the complete opposite of. Of course, the term ‘boomer’ refers to the ‘baby boomer’ generation who have become the poster children for people who don’t understand new technology, refuse to adapt to it and even actively work against it.
While the term ‘BoomerFi’ is amusing and a good way to get a reaction out of people - I don’t think it really accurately describes the situation here. The real issue is that the vested interests that DeFi is aiming to disrupt are usually controlled by the older generations so that’s why they fight back against things like DeFi. The every day ‘boomer’ would get just as much value out of DeFi as any of us even if they just did something like simple stablecoin yield farming (via an easy to use interface). We’re still pretty far away from this reality, and older generations are usually the last to actually adopt new technologies, but we shouldn’t exclude them just because of some stereotype.
The best part of all of this is that it’s impossible for any individual or group to exclude anyone based on anything - whether that be gender, sexuality, race or whatever - the Ethereum network is open to every single person on Earth. Hell, some of the most popular people in this industry are anonymous twitter accounts with anime profile pictures - they are also some of the most knowledgeable. Ethereum and DeFi completely levels the playing field and gives access to financial services to people without asking for their identity, financial status, background, credit score or anything like that - if you’ve got some ETH and an Ethereum wallet then you’ve got access to DeFi.
At the end of the day, the real enemy that Ethereum is trying to disrupt is centralization and centralized power structures that make the world an unfair place. Ethereum achieves this through DeFi which significantly lowers the barrier to entry for financial services (and takes away power from centralized incumbents), DAOs that allow people from anywhere in the world to come together and govern anything, and NFTs which allows all kinds of people to express themselves in new and unique ways. All of this is made possible because of the decentralized, censorship-resistant, permissionless and secure substrate that we all know as Ethereum.
Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano
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All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.