Motion: DeFi is DeFicient (Udi Wertheimer vs. Haseeb Qureshi)

Guests:

Udi Wertheimer (@UdiWertheimer) - debating FOR the motion
Haseeb Qureshi (@Hosseeb) - debating AGAINST the motion

Host:

Richard Yan (@gentso09)


Today’s motion concerns DeFi, or decentralized finance. The vision of decentralized finance is financial markets such as borrowing/lending and trading without intermediaries. The hope is this will improve efficiency, transparency and cost-effectiveness. MakerDAO, Compound, Uniswap are examples of DeFi apps w/ the most traction today.

Our two guests, Udi Wertheimer and Haseeb Qureshi are active members of the crypto community, to say the least. In fact, many consider them to be OG’s in the space.

No summary does justice to the rich exchange of the debate; Nevertheless here is a teaser:

Udi sees DeFi as purporting but failing to provide true self-custody and censorship-resistance. He also sees DeFi's composability as a non-innovative feature already found in non-DeFi products. And regulations will come for DeFi if and when it gets sufficient traction.

Haseeb believes that DeFi provides much stronger form of permissionless-ness than centralized counterparts (e.g., Bitfinex), and DeFi entrepreneurs can build on top of each other's work with tools and freedom unavailable in centralized finance. He also thinks some of the DeFi systems (e.g., MakerDAO) are regulation-robust for reasons like strong team decentralization and core clientele being outside of potentially hostile jurisdictions (e.g., U.S.).

If you are interested in debating or want to nominate someone to debate, DM me at @blockdebate.

Note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.

Source of select items discussed in the debate:

• Binance Singapore blocking withdrawal to Wasabi wallet: https://www.coindesk.com/binance-blockade-of-wasabi-wallet-could-point-to-a-crypto-crack-up
• MakerDAO: https://hackernoon.com/whats-makerdao-and-what-s-going-on-with-it-explained-with-pictures-f7ebf774e9c2
• Dragonfly Capital Research: https://medium.com/dragonfly-research
• Udi's Pro-Ethereum Alerts Telegram Group: https://t.me/ProEthereumAlerts