> There are people who prefer paying with cash for the same privacy advantages.
Unless they're mailing in cash envelopes, they're usually doing this in person, so while there is some privacy advantage, it's not as great as most think.
> Peer to peer money and self-custody is more decentralized than holding money in any centralized institution.
First off, crypto is not money - it is an asset that you invest in. Secondly, few people ever bother with self-custody, because it is extremely dangerous for any significant sum, and very very hard compared to the alternative - getting someone to take you dollars and give you BTC or or ETH in return (in a trustworthy manner) is much more difficult, so few people do it. And there are far fewer actual exchanges (real money to crypto) than there are banks in most of the world. This also hits on the point about money transfers: for the way people use crypto in practice, it is justa s easy if not easier to prevent them from trading it tahn it is to trade money.
> You clearly don't understand the concept, so please educate yourself before you comment. The composability of smart contracts is what enables defi.
"DeFi" itself is a meaningless notion, just like NFTs were. It has no legal power, and it can't be used to trade real-world goods or even real money (again, crypto in general is not money, it is something closer to stock, at least in the USA). The fact that the technology allows you to trade ETH for Dogecoin or whatever it is is neat, but irrelevant - my income is in RON and things I want to buy are in USD, EUR or RON - and this is true for the vast majority of the world.
Unless they're mailing in cash envelopes, they're usually doing this in person, so while there is some privacy advantage, it's not as great as most think.
> Peer to peer money and self-custody is more decentralized than holding money in any centralized institution.
First off, crypto is not money - it is an asset that you invest in. Secondly, few people ever bother with self-custody, because it is extremely dangerous for any significant sum, and very very hard compared to the alternative - getting someone to take you dollars and give you BTC or or ETH in return (in a trustworthy manner) is much more difficult, so few people do it. And there are far fewer actual exchanges (real money to crypto) than there are banks in most of the world. This also hits on the point about money transfers: for the way people use crypto in practice, it is justa s easy if not easier to prevent them from trading it tahn it is to trade money.
> You clearly don't understand the concept, so please educate yourself before you comment. The composability of smart contracts is what enables defi.
"DeFi" itself is a meaningless notion, just like NFTs were. It has no legal power, and it can't be used to trade real-world goods or even real money (again, crypto in general is not money, it is something closer to stock, at least in the USA). The fact that the technology allows you to trade ETH for Dogecoin or whatever it is is neat, but irrelevant - my income is in RON and things I want to buy are in USD, EUR or RON - and this is true for the vast majority of the world.