3 things the crypto sector must offer to truly mainstream with TradFi

cointelegraph.com:

In the past year, we’ve seen the crypto economy undergo exponential expansion as heaps of money poured into various cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFT), crypto indices, insurance products and decentralized options markets. 

The total value locked (TVL) in the DeFi sector across all chains has grown from $18 billion at the beginning of 2021 to $240 billion in January 2022. With so much liquidity in the ecosystem, the crypto lending space has also grown a significant amount, from $60 million at the beginning of 2021 to over $400 million by January 2022.

Despite the exponential growth and the innovation in DeFi products, the crypto lending market is still only limited to token-collateralized loans, i.e. pledge one cryptocurrency as collateral to borrow another cryptocurrency.

There are a few platforms such as Nexo and Genesis that provide NFT-collateralized loans but the service is mainly for institutional clients with blue-chip NFTs. For the retail masses, there isn’t much more than just the token-collateralized loans.

If the crypto economy wants to grow to a size that is compatible with any real economy, it will have to reach out to the mass of retail consumers and be able to provide financing options to them.

Here are the essential components that need to develop before crypto banking infrastructure can rival that of banks.

One of the most commonly asked questions from someone who is new and wants to enter the crypto economy is — what can I buy? In the current infrastructure, there is not much other than NFTs, DeFi products, staking and liquidity provision.

In a traditional economy, currencies exist because exchanging goods for services, or vice versa, generally does not have a 1:1 ratio,