I took out a loan with cryptocurrency and didn't sign a thing

Last week, I took out a loan without meeting anyone, signing anything, or even interacting with a human being. 

I also invested in a variety of assets that earn interest of up to 5.9 percent a year. I did it all on my own, from my computer. All I needed was some cryptocurrency and a knowledge of how these systems work. 

The amounts were tiny: The loan was $30, and I had $95 worth of crypto earning interest. But I could've easily done the same with much larger amounts, at those exact same terms. 

To do all this, I was using freely available DeFi, or decentralized finance, services based on the Ethereum blockchain. DeFi is one of the key usages of Ethereum, which, besides being a cryptocurrency, is also a decentralized app platform where most of the currently available DeFi apps reside.  Read more...