> Who are the people taking these inconvenient, unoptimal and expensive loans, when they can get better and cheaper loans through traditional means?
USDC is at 2.3% APR, USDT 3.78%. I think you'll find that most people cannot obtain unsecured loans that low, and the forms of collateral a bank will accept are much more limited. The biggest reason is also the reason why people like Elon Musk have massive loans: avoiding taxes on realized gains.
https://compound.finance/markets
> Also ‘governance tokens’? This smells like another term for “money from new users entering the system”. Which is precisely how Ponzi schemes work.
Sure, just like how "startups" are actually Ponzi schemes with early investors preying on the later ones. Same people owning it, too!