You can have assets on chain that can be used as collateral which can be liquidated if a loan isn't paid back. Additionally lending money is not only done so people can borrow from it. For example decentralized exchanges need a lot of liquidity in order to execute trades without very much slippage. You can provide liquidity to them and they will pay out transaction fees to you in exchange.
If doing so was useless, pawnshops wouldn't exist in real life. There is value in not having to sell something and later try to rebuy it.
Borrowing and lending is the primary and most important function of finance. It allows economic agents to trade future consumption for present consumption. Yet it is fundamentally impossible using blockchain technology.
a) expected to appreciate in value b) yield-bearing itself
and you don't want to sell it.
The issue with control is trust. The answer is to enable more trust, not to reduce the control.
If you are that worried about losing the money you lent you can pay for insurance. Here are some examples.
- https://makerdao.com/en/ (there is a growing "real-world asset"-collateralized pool as well)
These all offer rates competitive or superior to traditional methods thanks to being able to access a global pool of capital through a single programming interface that simplifies coordination and risk sharing between counter-parties.
And another early example Valora (on the Celo network) where you can make global transfers of money with a Venmo-like experience for fees <$0.01.
> These all offer rates competitive or superior to traditional methods
Also what do you mean by competitive rates? Note that if the borrower is getting paid interest at a rate above the market rate, the borrower is getting paid a competitive rate, but the lender is paying an uncompetitive rate.
[1] https://docs.goldfinch.finance/goldfinch/general-faq [2] https://blog.trusttoken.com/introducing-truefi-the-defi-prot... [3] https://maplefinance.gitbook.io/maple/protocol/borrowers
I browsed through all those web sites and all I see is ways of using the crypto wallets that have to be previously created through various means incompatible with each other. Let's not talk about the "be your own bank" motto which means that you have to secure your own money which is, at least scary for most people, and at most very difficult to do even for people knowledgeable with computers.
Here is something that is revolutionary and actually happened in the past 10 years: *online banks* that have no bricks-and-mortar offices! I created an account in less than 10 minutes, I have a debit card that I can use all over the world, I literally cannot spend more than what I have, and it's still a real bank which means that my account is insured if something bad ever happens. Where is the crypto equivalent?
(Genuinely curious about the answer) How would that be different from, or better than centralized platforms like kickstarter?
It's been a decade. What can I do with it that isn't a variant of "here's some artificial scarcity you can buy into early to make some cash"?