In many speeches or articles, I hear the same argument which sounds nice and promising -in some aspects at least: "The fintech revolution, defi and crypto coins will make banks obsolete and potentially disintermediate them."
The same argument could be made for the internet during its earlier stages, in terms of disintermediating major channels of communication and information. It was a popular question of debate whether the internet will disintermediate newspapers, TVs, or postal services.
The internet created Youtubers, online news channels, Netflix, and many email service providers. On the other hand, it didn't make tv or newspapers completely obsolete: They found ways to thrive by using the internet. They grew and in some cases gained a global reach. Same cannot be argued for the newspaper hawkers though. They mostly disappeared.
The point I'd like to make is slightly different: None of these developments created completely decentralized systems. We are not setting up servers at home to send and receive emails or publish our photos/videos. It requires technical knowledge and even pros don't prefer such setups. Instead, we use Gmail, Twitter, Youtube, etc. All kinds of streams of information -and entertainment- still take place on centralized platforms. In short, someone creates platforms and people gather there. They are easier to reach, customizable for our needs or tastes, and more user-friendly. These brands either charge us or show us ads (or use our data) and we consent to this.
This pattern may prevail in the ways new ledger (or database) technologies and peer-to-peer transactions come into our lives. Centralized platforms may provide convenience more than mere codes do: This is not to question the power of math or coding, but to point out the power of a human preference that favors convenience rather than complicated setups.
Today people who want to buy and store cryptocurrencies do it on Coinbase, Binance instead of their computers or decentralized exchanges. Peer-to-peer lending platforms exist but they are mostly not decentralized and used heavily by institutional investors. From this perspective, I'd expect banks not only to survive but also to cut costs substantially and reach unprecedented sizes, as long as they adapt themselves to these technologies with the right strategies.
This is why, I expect disintermediation of "labor" -especially the type of which is vulnerable to technological disruption as in the newspaper hawkers example- instead of "companies" by distributed database technologies. I also believe that the effects of this kind of disintermediation can only be mitigated by strong democratic institutions, which is another and long issue to think about.
