In DeFi Everyone Can Access Funds and Invest
During the keynote on “How Crypto is Redefining Finance” by Jeff Mei, Director of Global Strategy at Huobi Global, Jeff highlighted that “In the DeFi world everyone can obtain access to financial services and share their skillsets”.
Jeff’s role at Huobi Global entails global expansion, which means evaluating the needs when entering a new market and the needs of its users, complying with local regulations and checking the gaps that the products set out to fill.
He started by highlighting impressive numbers around Bitcoin’s market cap at USD 922 billion, Ethereum at USD 475 billion, and DeFi’s total value locked (TVL) at USD 250 billion.
Jeff pointed out that traditional finance is defined as managing large sums of money, especially by governments or large corporates, and providing funding for enterprises or individuals. Traditional finance now has to deal with DeFi.
“When DeFi comes into the picture, there are new ways to get access to money and financial services without a middleman or a centralized organization”
He mentioned the aspects of DeFi covering automated smart contracts, how DeFi is transforming the traditional financial world, transparent governance models and the low entry barriers. He pointed out that anyone with a couple of hundred of dollars can access crypto and DeFi. Its accessibility is marked by a custodial approach (user having self-custody), selection of projects, and integration with centralized exchanges (CEX) accounts.
“Huobi Cloud Wallet helps investors analyze projects and enable users to access DeFi projects through their CEX accounts”
“DeFi faces challenges, including attracting institutional investors, due to compliance, security, privacy, and KYC issues”
Jeff enthusiastically mentioned that public blockchains are like communities, giving anyone access and enabling them to participate in the governance. He drew a parallel to Kickstarter, the centralized crowdfunding platform where projects are being funded by people through small monetary donations, operating in a similar way as public blockchains.
He continued explaining how NFTs have got people interested in crypto, as they are able to share and sell art, music and other digital assets. He also talked about GameFi, which is a combination of gaming and DeFi and has been around for a while. “The game of WorldCraft was a link to the digital world allowing the user to build a mini world, but GameFi makes the model more standardized,” he reminisced.
On how DeFi can be made more user-friendly and less complicated for an average user since they won’t be able to set up a metamask to access it, Jeff assured that wallets are integrating with decentralized exchanges (DEXs) giving the experience of a regular wallet and a centralized exchange. He closed his keynote by emphatically saying that blockchain has the potential to upend traditional financial systems and business models.
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