I was reading an article on the Change Bank medium.com blog channel and it set me thinking about this particular comparison. While I sort of agree that the evils of a large organization exists in big traditional banks, it does not mean a smaller decentralized organization will not have the same friction. In any organization, human dynamics will be present and friction between different components of the organization can create an adversarial environment. And at the same time, an adversarial environment within the bank as well as between banks can be beneficial for consumers like us. Such is competition.
What I do like to focus on is the differences of a decentralized banking services versus a traditional large bank. In a decentralized banking service like Change Bank, they are not tied down by the need to make profits with every service that they bring on board. They can bring on a variety of banking services and allow the third-party service providers to market their products to Change Bank users. This is something traditional banks cannot do, as they must invest into the development of every new banking product themselves and they are beholden to their shareholders for every penny spent. A traditional bank will never be able to compete with a decentralized banking service, such as Change Bank, in providing the variety of products and services.
At the same time, a traditional bank must profit as much as they can from every banking product that they offer in order to recoup the development and marketing cost. For a decentralized bank, this does not matter as the risk is undertaken by the third-party service providers and Change Bank benefits whenever a particular service providers is able to attract more users. A decentralized banking service can even bring onboard non-traditional investment products easily as the costs of onboarding a new service provider will be low. However I do caution that decentralized banking service such as Change Bank to curate and risk-assess every service provider before onboarding them. Something I am confident the Change Bank management team will be doing.
These are the distinct advantages that I see between Change Bank versus Traditional Banks as Change Bank are working for Change Bank Token holders (themselves and us included) who are, at the same time, Change Bank Consumers. Whereas in a traditional bank, they are working for their shareholders first and foremost and hence traditional banks have a more predatory relationship with their consumers, sad to say.
Onwards to decentralized banking! Onwards to Change!