Use cases are the same as with money btw. People use cryptocurrency today to trade and to transfer value. You can try to ignore that, or point to the low adoption, but it is there.
Do they though? I recently did the math and people mostly seem to use crypto markets for what you described. Only about 10% of Bitcoin transactions actually have any blockchain involvement, the rest is all handled internally by markets. And that 10% was on a good day, there are many days when that number is much lower.
Depends on how you define bitcoin transaction. The majority of BTC <> USD transactions (or any other currency) has no involvement of the blockchain at all. They happen purely within the databases of the markets.
> the same could be said about nearly any financial instrument
Well, that's kind of my point. People say that Bitcoin, the technology, is being used for lots of transactions already. However, most BTC, the cryptocurrency, transactions don't use the Bitcoin blockchain at all. They use the same basic technology that traditional banks and markets use. So where's the value add in the blockchain if it isn't being used?
Different banks and financial services use different protocols, some instant some deferred, to interoperate.
So, for those of us on the outside, DeFi just looks like a bunch of crypto enthusiasts finding exotic new ways to gamble with each other. It's neat and all, but I don't see how it ever really affects the rest of us.
The whole point is that you now have interoperability between many projects and their tokens, data, stablecoins, etc.
that's pretty much what I meant by
> crypto enthusiasts finding exotic new ways to gamble with each other
Interoprability between cryptos is all DeFi can do. What's the other use case? If I said, "I was going to do X, but thanks to the power of DeFi it makes sense to pay the fees and absorb the volatility risk to do it on a blockchain", what's X?
I don't know what kind of remittances you think I'm in a bubble for being unaware of. The best way to explain would be to actually answer my question: what's the non-crypto use case that can be solved better with defi than without it?