Despite heightened adoption and acceptance, it can’t be denied that the whole cryptocurrency industry is perceived to be a high-risk investment. In fact, many are averse to the constant market volatility, scams, hacks, rug pulls, and speculation plaguing the market.
This is, perhaps, even truer for the DeFi sector. Especially since it has fallen victim to scams and hacks amounting to over $10 billion this year.
According to cryptocurrency entrepreneur Erik Voorhees, the higher propensity for DeFi protocols to be attacked comes from their novelty. In a recent podcast, he noted that the lack of peer reviews and background information from these protocols is the primary driver behind these crimes.
“Any new project in DeFi is by definition far more riskier than the base Ethereum chain and that itself is riskier than Bitcoin.”
Worth noting, however, that he believes this should not malign the credibility of the whole sector.
“The early bitcoin exchanges that were scams doesn’t make Bitcoin a scam and the DeFi projects which are scams doesn’t make DeFi a scam.”
Albeit, the low-risk factor posed by regulated exchanges and high cap protocols does not rectify the risky turns currently being taken by the market.
During the same podcast, Alex Gladstein, a Human Rights Foundation executive who advocates the use of Bitcoin by activists, backed this idea. He suggested that the surge in DeFi activity is starting to resemble the financial crisis through which Bitcoin was born in 2009.
Even the Bank of England passed similar remarks recently, claiming that the unregulated growth of the market could lead to a very similar economic meltdown.
Gladstein compared the present surge of meme coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu to the risky mortgage-backed securities that were sold to investors during the U.S Housing Bubble.
Of late, these coins have managed to surpass the market cap of top coins like Litecoin, Chainlink, and Uniswap, among others, with rallies reaching up to triple digits.
The rise of these altcoins has also led to many new investors viewing Bitcoin as a “boomer coin” with fewer use cases and profitability, than alternative tokens. Previous studies have revealed similar results, with many millennials preferring high yield speculative coins over BTC.
Gladstein believes this preference will be regrettable, adding
“Think there’s gonna be so much sorrow and regret over that perspective which is really dominant in the crypto space ten years from now… Everybody’s gonna wish they just bought more Bitcoin.”