And... What does this accomplish, exactly? Besides "get rich, quick, in virtual money that, for now, some folks will convert to real money, maybe"
Without money transfer, this system remains a toy system. With money transfer, it becomes a regulatory bypass. No amount of complexity layered on top fixes this.
The fact that central bankers are busy banning it should give you an idea how disruptive it is.
The Nigerian central actually prohibited banks from facilitating or participating in crypto based transactions. You can still trade legally however you want.
A banking and trading account where I can access multiple currencies without ever filling out a form or talking to a sales rep or being from the same country as the banking institution or passing some arbitrary credit check has to be worth something
I can’t buy AAPL here in India without going through a broker and clearing kyc and having certain amount of capital. I can buy tokenized AAPL that will sit in a wallet I control at all times, can buy with literally fractions of a dollar, and buy without ever going through a gatekeeper.
But again, you’re likely in the first world so it doesn’t matter to you. But here in the third world, people are willing to literally break local laws to access these markets.
A smart contract can currently take your tokenized USD (we'll use USDC since its backed by Coinbase), use that as collateral to borrow ETH on AAVE.com (a lending protocol), use 50% of that ETH to buy up USDC again, use this USDC + ETH to create a liquidity pair on Uniswap, and earning 0.3% fees on any swaps made between USDC and ETH.
All in a single transaction.