How Crypto Will Undercut Wall Street DeFi entrepreneurs circumvent financial gatekeepers Commentary Bitcoin was born with an ambitious goal: rendering fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar obsolete. Although bitcoin has yet to succeed—mostly due to transaction costs and price volatility—visionaries have built on bitcoin’s underlying technology, the blockchain, to take on another target: Wall Street. Decentralized finance (DeFi), the ecosystem of cryptocurrencies, exchanges, and shadow banks, is heralding a new era of digital investing. The rising deposits locked in DeFi lending or c...