How do you think your bank manages to make billions of dollars in profit every year? Do you think the money that millions of Americans lend to them for effectively 0% returns has anything to do with it? What do you imagine they do with that money, and how does it differ substantially from what DeFi calls yield farming?
Yield farming carries a similar or greater risk to investing in stocks and sector ETFs, and that is certainly not what retail banks do with customer funds (that was outlawed by the Volcker Rule in Dodd-Frank), nor is retail banking how investment banks make money. Nevermind that there obviously is no FDIC insurance for these crypto "savings accounts".
You're asking good questions, but be careful not to jump to easy answers -- you might lose your money!
My point is that a bank is essentially a commissioned matchmaker for lenders and borrowers, and that depositing your hard earned money in a traditional big bank savings account is effectively a free cash flow for them insured by the U.S. government. So while I agree with you that a Citibank savings account and a Yearn USDC deposit have frankly incomparable risk profiles, in the sense that if the bank ever needs to claim FDIC insurance then shit has truly hit the fan, I disagree that these two positions generate income (or lack thereof) in any fundamentally different way.
I would not recommend my grandmother uses Yearn, but I also wouldn't recommend that my little cousin who knows how to program saves her money in a Wells Fargo account either.
Regardless I appreciate your considerate comment. I always know something interesting is afoot when HN relentlessly downvotes both pro and con comments.
