Analyzing Opportunities and Threats of Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

With the expansion of digitalization into the financial sector, emerging technology has also demonstrated new applications within the traditional financial system. This rapid change in the financial system was not limited only to the applications in the central financial system and the emergence of financial assets, but then steps were taken to the decentralized financial system. The aim of this study is to examine the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) system, which has emerged as an independent alternative to the traditional finance system, and to reveal the opportunities and threats in this field. In this context, the focus was first on the traditional central financial system, which consists mostly of banking and financial institutions. Then, digital assets, cryptocurrencies, FinTech and RegTech which are the antecedents of decentralized finance system were explained. This study examines DeFi, an independent and pioneering technology, highlighting its distinctive features and explaining the opportunities and threats it presents. While the important opportunities emerging with DeFi are accessibility, globality, cost effectiveness and transparency, the main threats are listed as exclusion of the central financial system, volatility, legal problems and security risk.