After the Chinese crackdown on domestic crypto currency exchange, users turned to the messaging app telegram for their over the counter trading. The most basic form of tradinging desk run on top of another legitimate protocol.
After the largest Bitcoin Exchange Bitfinex was cut off the banking system they started to issue Tether for dollars but instead of getting those dollars from the customers, they started to lend them out on margin markets. So every Tether is backed by a loan of another user. Which is nothing else than what central banks do.
These lending markets are about to become self-service smart contracts while Telegram groups will be replaced by smart contracts for trading. Crypto doesn't need a central bank since we have our own central bank which is running entirely on trust and prints our own money.
We need no one to faciliate settlement of our transactions. China will have to present a better alternative to tame the appetite for funny named coins.
While this sounds funny it reminds me of the comparison between Bitcoin and Internet. First the Internet came in the form of wallet gardens because access providers had to find a revenue model what resulted in exclusive content via some kind of intranet accessible only to subscribers. But subscribers wanted the real internet, not the garden. The software that had to be used to connect was only used to open the browser for the world wide web. In the beginning the experience was far superior in the wallet gardens but soon the web catch up.
There are better payment methods out there but the public wants the digital cash. In addition to circumventing regulation of our wallet financial gardens, we also modularized banking into its smallest functional parts to be run by separate entities and provide a single aggregated product to the public. The different implementations integrate seamlessly by the use of smart contracts. The blockchain is our operating system.