Is that true? Is gambling now legal in jurisdictions where it wasn't before because it's being facilitated by unlicensed entities? Can I do an end-run against money-lending regulations in my country because I'm doing it online?
To me it simply seems that enforcement hasn't (yet) caught up.
When the internet was new, people set up offshore gambling sites and people used them. Then the government started harassing payment processors to prevent people from transferring money there. Which doesn't work if there is no payment intermediary to pressure to cut them off, so now they're back.
Whether this is illegal or not depends on which law and jurisdiction you're talking about, but the whole concept is kind of ridiculous. If you can go to Las Vegas and legally place bets, you should be able to place bets at a Las Vegas casino over the internet from anywhere. The ability to do this is a feature of the internet, not a problem to be "solved" with more authoritarian control over everything.
It's not like a regular loan, whereby a company uses your money to expand, innovate, hire and train new employees, to build and sell something people want.
Wouldn't this mean that most DeFi would be hacked or rug-pulled by now? Seems the opposite is true, as only a small percentage of DeFi sees hacks and/or rug-pulls.
Could you make the same argument you generally make towards banks as well? Seems like you could, and in that case you're just making an argument against investing in general, not against cryptocurrencies.
2. DeFi yield relies on Greater Fools essentially gambling their money on cryptocurrency pairs. It might not last forever. I'd rather have 5% yield in corporate bonds, denominated in a currency that I can pay rent and groceries with, than 20% in a shitcoin which might be worthless tomorrow.
We're heading to a world where authoritarian governments want to eliminate cash. Handing the Stasi the ability to prevent people from so much as buying food from a grocer without their permission is catastrophic, much less the impact from such a comprehensive level of surveillance as takes place when every purchase made by everyone goes into a central database.
We need a digital technology that preserves the autonomy and anonymity people have always had since the beginning with cash. (And before the obligatory pedant comes in to say that everything on a blockchain is public, they're still not attached to your identity, and there are technical solutions to preserving anonymity there too.)
In effect there would be a bifurcation - you can either have permissionless transactions, or you can interact with the real world; since all the legitimate businesses and law-abiding people would have to avoid the "permissionless" system unless they can break the anonymity of the transaction and verify that any required filters have been applied.
Nearly all transactions are that small, and the ones that aren't (predominantly vehicles and real estate) are already not anonymous for independent reasons.
It generally doesn't cost >$10,000 to buy a sandwich or a book.
If you take a look at what company he currently works at (and founded), it's pretty obvious where his hate for cryptocurrencies come from.
Here's how it's going to go down, like it always does:
1. Gov. tries to regulate and restrict usage
2. If that fails, they will go after bank accounts tied to brokerage accounts etc. Hell, in some countries it's extremely hard to use money made from crypto as a down payment for mortgage, auto loans, and what not - because how hard it is to prove that the money has been earned legally.
Some banks won't even touch crypto customers with a 10 feet pole, because all the regulatory uncertainty.
3. If that fails, they will start to lay down the law with even more drastic measures.
I love technology, I really do - but there's this extremely naïve and arrogant attitude in the community, that if you just power through in the name of technology, and ask for forgiveness later, then it's OK - it rarely if ever works that way. Regulators do not suddenly give in, and abolish "arbitrary" laws / regulations because someone found ways to circumvent or skirt them.
FWIW, I'm not saying that the technology is a dud - only that trying to circumvent regulations by "doing it with crypto" / "decentralized" is a flawed way to go on about things.