It should be noted that Arthur Hayes regularly comments on what is happening in the cryptocurrency industry and the global economy as a whole. In particular, this week he spoke about the declining role of the dollar around the world and the possible implications of this situation for cryptocurrencies. You can read more about this in a separate article.

What cryptocurrency users need

The issue of decentralisation has been a central theme of Whitepaper’s Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin. For the average consumer, though, it’s not that important, Hayes believes. Here’s one of his quotes in which he shares his perspective on what’s going on. The quote is quoted by Decrypt.

At the end of the day, the average person doesn’t care about decentralisation or centralisation. If you want to become an individual financial institution and take control of the fate of your finances, at the moment you can do that, but it is a difficult path.

It is important to understand that we are talking about ordinary beginners who, at best, understand how cryptocurrencies work only in general terms. The same is definitely not true for advanced users, so it is definitely not worth taking Hayes' comment as a reason to promote centralised platforms. Yet it is decentralisation - i.e. independence from any officials, governments and judges - that is the key advantage of popular cryptocurrencies. If this component is taken away, the value of coins will be much lower.

Digital assets are decentralised in the sense that they do not need financial institutions for someone to retain ownership of their funds or conduct transactions.

However, millions of people prefer to rely on centralisation in the form of banks or brokers that offer services related to cryptocurrencies. In this form, crypto is more user-friendly, notes Hayes.

Good price, good product, good user experience. These are all things that most of you care about and will care about in the future.

Of course, many key processes within the crypto industry itself are tied to centralised venues in one way or another. For example, most transactions between traders are done on exchanges like Binance or Coinbase, with the platforms allowing withdrawals directly to a bank card – another step in the centralisation of the crypto market.

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Unfortunately, last year, excessive centralisation has already caused an entire crypto disaster. The massive collapse of several major crypto platforms – including the FTX exchange – significantly shattered the image of digital assets in the eyes of major investors. Since then, however, the industry has managed to regain its own footing.

In Hayes’ view, centralised bodies provide a crucial middle ground – they relieve ordinary investors of the burden of holding their assets and simplify many transaction processes.

Most people want nothing to do with managing their finances. They want to have a meaningful job, save money and provide for their family.

That said, there are decentralised alternatives for the most popular services in crypto – for example, you can trade on Uniswap instead of Binance. However, Hayes believes that there is no demand for decentralised crypto projects because their benefits simply don’t excite the average user.

This is a rather strange statement, as decentralised platforms are very popular among holders of digital assets. For example, in March 2023, total trading volume on decentralised exchanges surpassed the $100 billion mark, reaching the equivalent of $112 billion. By comparison, volumes on centralised exchanges in the same month reached $984 billion.

Of course, the figure for decentralised platforms is markedly lower than centralised ones, but we can not say there is no demand for such sites. In addition, if you examine the chart above, you can see that DEX increased significantly in November 2022, which is when the FTX crypto exchange collapsed. This event caused many investors not only to start storing crypto assets outside of centralised platforms, but also to use decentralised exchanges.

The former BitMEX executive believes that a much bigger driver for market participants is inflation in the global economy. The constant depreciation of currencies and other traditional assets makes crypto a truly attractive investment option. He added that the prospects of decentralised crypto adoption by the masses are likely to be determined by factors outside the industry. We are talking about inflation or the recent banking crisis in the US.


We think this position by Arthur Hayes is too radical. Certainly, newcomers are much more comfortable using centralised cryptocurrency exchanges instead of hardware wallets, as the interaction with them resembles email clients. However, eventually, many digital asset lovers will learn how to properly store coins and at the same time realize the beauty of decentralization along with the opportunities that cryptocurrencies offer. Therefore, it is not quite right to talk about a lack of demand for decentralised platforms in this case.

However, usability does play an important role, as MetaMask is too unintuitive compared to the familiar Phantom. Therefore, developers should pay attention to this component.


What do you think about it? Share your opinion in our ex-millionaire cryptochat. There we wait for the new bullrun to arrive.

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