IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/wifinw/328275.html

Decentralised finance: Growth, risks and regulation of a shadow financial system with crypto-assets

Author

Listed:
  • Read, Oliver

Abstract

Decentralised Finance applications aim to replicate existing financial products and services from the highly regulated Traditional Finance (TradFi) system using the distributed ledger technology and smart contracts. An open, multi-layered and composable architecture has facilitated the deployment of many DeFi projects leading to a growing complex network of interacting DeFi protocols. The size of the DeFi market has grown to several hundred billion USD in Total Value Locked by users in DeFi protocols. Important use cases include decentralised lending and borrowing, decentralised exchanges and crypto staking. The DeFi sector is effectively becoming a shadow financial system with cryptoassets. DeFi innovators praise decentralisation and disintermediation of financial products and services as beneficial. On the contrary, regulators and policymakers issue warnings on consumer risks and financial stability risks. Awareness has increased following a string of crypto-related collapses and failures during the Crypto Winter 2022-2023. The emerging consensus is that the DeFi market needs to be supervised, but how? The traditional approach to regulate a few centralised entities and financial intermediaries does not work. Thus, a range of regulatory responses and approaches is being discussed. In the European Union the path has been partly laid by the Markets in Crypto-assets Regulation (MiCA) as the text itself contains mandatory steps to address developments of the DeFi market.

Suggested Citation

  • Read, Oliver, 2025. "Decentralised finance: Growth, risks and regulation of a shadow financial system with crypto-assets," wifin Working Paper Series 18/2025, RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Wiesbaden Institute of Finance and Insurance (wifin), revised 2025.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:wifinw:328275
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/328275.2/1/wifin_WP_18_2025_Read_v2.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cornelli, Giulio & Gambacorta, Leonardo & Garratt, Rodney & Reghezza, Alessio, 2025. "Why DeFi lending? Evidence from Aave V2," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    2. Sirio Aramonteand & Wenqian Huang & Andreas Schrimpf, 2021. "DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Giorgio Abate & Nicola Branzoli & Raffaele Gallo, 2023. "Crypto-Asset Markets: Structure, Market Developments in 2022 and Policy Considerations," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 76(3), pages 353-386.
    2. Carlo Campajola & Marco D'Errico & Claudio J. Tessone, 2022. "MicroVelocity: rethinking the Velocity of Money for digital currencies," Papers 2201.13416, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.
    3. Cornelli, Giulio & Gambacorta, Leonardo & Garratt, Rodney & Reghezza, Alessio, 2025. "Why DeFi lending? Evidence from Aave V2," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    4. Raphael Auer & Bernhard Haslhofer & Stefan Kitzler & Pietro Saggese & Friedhelm Victor, 2024. "The technology of decentralized finance (DeFi)," Digital Finance, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 55-95, March.
    5. Saengchote, Kanis, 2023. "Decentralized lending and its users: Insights from compound," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    6. Luis Gutiérrez de Rozas, 2022. "The first ten years of the European Systemic Risk Board (2011-2021)," Financial Stability Review, Banco de España, issue Spring.
    7. Andry Alamsyah & Gede Natha Wijaya Kusuma & Dian Puteri Ramadhani, 2024. "A Review on Decentralized Finance Ecosystems," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 16(3), pages 1-29, February.
    8. Şoiman, Florentina & Dumas, Jean-Guillaume & Jimenez-Garces, Sonia, 2023. "What drives DeFi market returns?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    9. Lukasz A. Drozd & Marina Tavares, 2024. "Generative AI: A Turning Point for Labor’s Share?," Economic Insights, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, vol. 9(1), pages 2-11, March.
    10. Jonathan Chiu & Charles M. Kahn & Thorsten V. Koeppl, 2022. "Grasping decentralized finance through the lens of economic theory," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(4), pages 1702-1728, November.
    11. Carlo Campajola & Raffaele Cristodaro & Francesco Maria De Collibus & Tao Yan & Nicolo' Vallarano & Claudio J. Tessone, 2022. "The Evolution Of Centralisation on Cryptocurrency Platforms," Papers 2206.05081, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.
    12. Pietro Saggese & Esther Segalla & Michael Sigmund & Burkhard Raunig & Felix Zangerl & Bernhard Haslhofer, 2023. "Assessing the Solvency of Virtual Asset Service Providers: Are Current Standards Sufficient?," Papers 2309.16408, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.
    13. Cevik, Emrah Ismail & Gunay, Samet & Zafar, Muhammad Wasif & Destek, Mehmet Akif & Bugan, Mehmet Fatih & Tuna, Fatih, 2022. "The impact of digital finance on the natural resource market: Evidence from DeFi, oil, and gold," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    14. Claudio Impenna, 2023. "The Crypto Ecosystem: Prospects and Challenges for Regulators," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 76(3), pages 297-310.
    15. Fantacci, Luca & Lorenzini, Marcella, 2024. "Technology versus trust: Non-bank credit systems from notarized loans in Early Modern Europe to cryptolending," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 83-95.
    16. Aldasoro, Iñaki & Cornelli, Giulio & Ferrari Minesso, Massimo & Gambacorta, Leonardo & Habib, Maurizio Michael, 2025. "Stablecoins, money market funds and monetary policy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    17. Arindam Misra, 2024. "Tax Policy Handbook for Crypto Assets," Papers 2403.15074, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    18. Ghaemi Asl, Mahdi & Ben Jabeur, Sami, 2024. "Tail connectedness of DeFi and CeFi with accessible banking pillars: Unveiling novel insights through wavelet and quantile cross-spectral coherence analyses," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 95(PB).
    19. Sabrina Aufiero & Silvia Bartolucci & Fabio Caccioli & Pierpaolo Vivo, 2025. "Mapping Microscopic and Systemic Risks in TradFi and DeFi: a literature review," Papers 2508.12007, arXiv.org.
    20. Kliber, Agata, 2022. "Looking for a safe haven against American stocks during COVID-19 pandemic," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F30 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - General
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O38 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:wifinw:328275. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fwfwdde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.