When someone says "why would anyone use a decentralized version?" remember a time in crypto when people asked why anyone would use a decentralized exchange over a centralized exchange. Obv lots of stuff don't need to be decentralized but have an open mind and think further out

Co-founder @bountycaster (bountycaster.xyz). Previously: co-founder of Scalar Capital, product at Coinbase, co-producer @ethereumfilm

I actually don't remember a ton of arguments about decentralized exchanges themselves being a bad idea, more that nobody wanted to use them early on because the products were very bad

the decentralized exchange use case was in high demand because centralized exchange hacks/scams were the #1 way to get rug pulled in the early days

intersubjective mechanism design @ poidh.xyz - come chill /poidh + follow @poidhbot

def would enjoy going down memory lane if you can pull up those debates!

honestly cannot even remember if I had an opinion on this in the 2013-2016 era but I do remember the idea being in vogue in 2017 

I even got rugged on one of the first "decentralized exchange" coins lol

This was a common thing people said when there were only a few coins and I debated a lot of people on it! Might pull some up later

Common argument was that decentralized exchanges had bad liquidity and gave a worse spread, and it was unfixable because they were capital inefficient. Not to mention stablecoins were also not really a thing, and not accepted anywhere, so you'd still need to use a CEX eventually anyway etc.

Also it was hard to envision how more complex instruments would get implemented (now we have collateralized lending, perps, stablecoins, yielding assets, etc).

I remember the money laundering conversations over and over