Shorting is a strategy of borrowing, selling, and then repurchasing the asset when the price drops

Maybe dumb, but I never realized this is how shorting works behind the scenes. Is this a major reason why people borrow on lending markets like aave?

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Many such cases.

Key part of tradfi is keeping ppl thinking it's too complex to understand.

Not dumb to be blindfolded. Smart to take it off and finally see.

yes, kinda. 
It's also to lever up on things like BTC while shorting things like the dollar because if you take out a loan against BTC in stables and purchase more BTC with this loan you doing the same thing you outlined. 

Another reason to use lending markets to gain access to liquidity on an asset you still want to long, i.e. hodling BTC but you still pay the bills with those gains.