The Three-letter Words
Back in the good old days when there are only payments by cash, people spend their money anonymously. As a customer, one does not need to disclose his identity. As a business owner, you don't need to get to know your customers (KYC) prior to doing business with them. Then insidiously, or all in a sudden, financial institutions, including banks, fintechs and those governed-by-government institutions having to deal with money, are required to subscribe to a Common Reporting System (CRS) in which these institutions are allowed to share the KYC database if or when they think necessary, obstensibly in an attempt of Anti-Money-Laundering (AML). The latter sounds like an good ideal to pursue, but on second thought a serious contravention of personal privacy. If you search the forums, it is not uncommon you'll see people expressing their anger and greivance over frozen bank accounts, especially those accounts opened with fintech companies, over which regulation seems to be minimal, if at all.
Decentralized Finance as Means of Financial Freedom
In January 2009, a person or group of persons with the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto created the first cryptocurrency Bitcoin based on blockchain technology. Its price rose from worthy of nothing to more than $40,000 as it stands today. The yearning for cryptocurrency partly resulted from the fact that from the advent of such entities, people were beginning to be able to keep their assets in their own hands, e.g. via some dencentralized wallets. If one is risk-adversive, no problem, they could choose to buy and keep stablecoins (pegged to some fiat currency like USD or Euro), and have they safely kept in blockchain, the key to which is in the hand of the owner. Unless you divulge the private key to somebody else, nobody can confiscate your assets or freeze your accounts. 'Coz there is no more accounts but blockchain.
And there are dApps (decentralized apps), too. Quite unlike the old-school centralized platforms e.g. Youtube, you've got to hit certain subscribers' target and number of views before you could monetize on your uploads, dApp platforms/ social media reward you almost instantly with cryptos. So cool. For years on Google Maps, I write reviews, upload photos, curate restaurants, shops, malls and have got nothing on return. I really look forward to some map dApps that could emulate or exceed Google Maps in the future. Tell me if you hit upon one. BTW, Foam looks quite promising:
https://map.foam.space/#/at/?lng=114.1443800&lat=22.3354800&zoom=5.00
dappradar.com and dapp.com have those most common/ popular dapps aggregated in one site. Worth looking at.