The Only Place Where $20 or $20B Gets You the Same Access

By Marija Matic

The crypto narrative has shifted in recent months. 

Bitcoin (BTC, “A-”) ETFs now trade on Wall Street.

Crypto equity index futures are about to hit the market.

And traditional banks are experimenting with custody services.

With all this “institutional adoption” dominating headlines, it’s easy to think decentralized finance is set to fade into the background.

After all, if you can buy Bitcoin with a single click in your brokerage account …

Why would anyone bother with new websites, unfamiliar wallets, and risk warnings? 

I’ll tell you why this crypto mission is far from accomplished.

Consider this …

In traditional finance, every door has a doorman. 

• Want to open a savings account? The bank sets the rules. 

• Want a loan? Someone decides if you’re “creditworthy.” 

• Want to trade stocks? You’ll need approval, a broker and often a large bank balance.

TradFi adoption of crypto is important, yes.

But it’s not the same as what DeFi brings to the table. Not even close.

Fund managers, custodians and banks are simply repackaging crypto inside the same walls we already know …

Accessible to some, gated by regulations and ultimately controlled by a handful of institutions.

DeFi, on the other hand, continues to build something entirely different. 

It removes those gatekeepers. If you have an internet connection and as little as $20, you can already participate. 

In DeFi, roles that were once reserved for big institutions — lender, market maker, liquidity provider — are suddenly open to individuals at any scale. 

Someone with $20 and someone with $20 million are using the exact same rails.

That’s not just convenience. It’s a revolution in access.

But DeFi doesn’t just copy banks and putting them on-chain. It unlocks entirely new financial tools. 

Because DeFi is built on open protocols, anyone can combine existing pieces into new systems — what the industry calls “money Legos.” 

For example:

• A developer can take a lending protocol, combine it with an automated trading system, and build a yield optimizer — all without asking anyone’s permission.

• Protocols can plug into each other instantly, creating new products like collateralized stablecoins, automated options vaults or tokenized real-world assets.

In traditional finance, launching a new product can take years of coding, approvals and lawyers. 

In DeFi, it can happen in weeks. 

That pace of innovation makes DeFi not just an alternative, but a public innovation lab for global finance.

You’re the Bank, the Exchange & the Clearinghouse

Cutting out the middlemen does mean some more work for you.

Typically, DeFi users have to be more active and manage their financial activity more carefully. 

But the result is that they can benefit from opportunities and rewards that TradFi institutions have kept to themselves. 

For example …

Lending: You can deposit stablecoins or crypto into a lending pool to earn interest automatically.

Borrowing: You can also use your crypto as collateral to take out a loan — instantly, with no credit check. 

Providing liquidity: Adding your tokens to a decentralized exchange allows that exchange to use your liquidity to fill trades. In return, you collect fees every time someone trades against your liquidity.

Trading peer-to-peer: Swap tokens directly on-chain without needing an exchange account.

Providing insurance: In DeFi, you can essentially become an insurer. You back coverage against risks like a stablecoin losing its peg, smart contract hacks or protocol failures.

You can even insure yourself.

You can buy protection for your positions against those same risks. This can reduce your downside exposure and still let you stay in the market.

Participation in governance: By holding governance tokens, you can vote on protocol upgrades, fee structures and treasury decisions for a specific network or platform …

Something you’ll never be invited to do in traditional finance.

These are roles that used to be the exclusive territory of banks, hedge funds, insurance giants and clearinghouses. Now, they’re accessible to anyone with a smartphone. 

That’s what makes DeFi more than just an “investment tool.” 

It’s participatory finance!

A Counterweight to Centralization

To be fair, institutional adoption has its upside too. 

It’s great for market confidence and usually great for the price. And your wallets don’t mind that! 

But if that’s all we had, crypto would just become another product on Wall Street’s shelf. Neat, convenient, and profitable — but still centralized and gatekept.

DeFi exists to ensure there’s always a parallel system: One that is open, permissionless, transparent and global. 

Without it, we risk ending up with the same concentration of financial power we were trying to escape.

DeFi Makes Finance a Public Good

In short, DeFi doesn’t replace traditional finance; it balances it. It provides a counterweight, a check, and an alternative.

That said, DeFi isn’t perfect. 

It’s messy, experimental, sometimes insecure and often intimidating to newcomers. 

But it represents something unique: a world where finance itself is a public good.

With as little as $20, anyone can play roles once reserved for giant banks. With open-source code, anyone can audit and verify how the system works. With composability, anyone can build the next breakthrough financial tool.

If crypto is the future of money, then DeFi is the guarantee that the future will remain open.

That’s Worth the Extra Step or Two, Right?

DeFi is powered by complex technology under the hood. But the most promising platforms can make it feel surprisingly simple for users.

Take yield-bearing coins, for example.

On the surface, these assets behave like any other token. And they are just as easy to buy on a decentralized exchange. 

But behind the scenes, these coins are actually tokenized liquidity positions. That means by holding them, you’re automatically earning around DeFi yields, can handily outpace traditional yields. 

Neat, right? 

With no more technical knowledge of DeFi other than how to buy a coin on a decentralized exchange, you can benefit from a robust DeFi opportunity and earn passive income. 

As DeFi develops and grows, I expect to see more user-friendly opportunities like these yield-bearing tokens in the market. 

When that happens, I believe it’ll be the start of DeFi’s ability to truly stand as a parallel market to TradFi.

Best,

Marija Matić

P.S. My colleague Mark Gough just released the names of three coins he believes could generate “Superstar” returns during the coming altcoin season. To get your hands on this powerful research, click this link here. But hurry — the window to jump in closes before Sept. 17, and this link will expire even sooner.