What I really mean is what can do you in DeFi that is connected with the real world? In other words, what can you do other that doesn't fall into the category of using your money to make more money with no effect on the material world?
Examples of things that traditional finance enables that connect to the real world:
- Get a student loan (you get an education)
- Get a car loan (you get a car)
- Get a home loan (you get a house)
- Insure your car or home (perhaps including insurance in finance is a bit broad, but I think it's appropriate)
- Have some claim on the future cash flows of a company that makes real things (public equities)
Obviously traditional finance isn't some bastion of providing "real world" value and resistance to over-financialization. But DeFi seems like pure financialization so far. I suppose the first step is to enable payments (arguably the definition of money is a payment system), but it doesn't seem like that has caught on very much either.
An end goal of crypto is to have all financial and ownership services exist on-chain. To conceptualize the real world as somehow forever separate is going to lead to the correct conclusion that DeFi doesn't seem to affect "the real world".
> - Get a student loan (you get an education)
Requires identification.
> - Get a car loan (you get a car)
Requires identification.
> - Get a home loan (you get a house)
Requires identification.
> - Insure your car or home (perhaps including insurance in finance is a bit broad, but I think it's appropriate)
Requires identification.
> - Have some claim on the future cash flows of a company that makes real things (public equities)
Doesn't necessarily require identification. There are cryptos looking to tokenize and fractionalize public/private equities. The equity would exist on chain, not on the private ledgers of banks/clearing houses/brokers/the NASDAQ. You would own your equity via a private key, and not by the say so of Fidelity (e.g.) and the government.
You've listed three types of loans that require you to have some form of identity which allows for the existence of credit/reputation. Until crypto has a functional decentralized identity ((which is being worked on by many)[1], and even has a (W3C draft)[2]) and government recognition, you will likely not see traditional lending products. Doesn't mean it isn't possible.
Insurance also requires identification for reputational purposes, but less for enforcing payments and more for measuring risk.
Crop insurance is a popular use case being investigated for poor rural areas to get insurance. Remember, traditional finance requires massive human capital infrastructure, general civil infrastructure, and minimized governmental corruption to ensure debt repayment occurs. It's may be easier bootstrap insurance from a decentralized network/blockchain + satellite internet, for certain communities.
