Credit Unions were created because certain groups of people were being left out of the traditional financial system. Those disenfranchised groups chose a cooperative model where they pooled resources to help each other using a democratic process by which to govern this model.

Following the Great Recession, there has been a groundswell of disenchantment with traditional financial systems which has resulted in a deep distrust of centralized structures. The advent of Bitcoin ushered in a new way to think about how people interact with money. The DeFi movement, where centralized authoritarian structures are rejected, has gained momentum.

The decentralized cooperative ethos of both credit unions and the DeFi movement are aligned. Although one movement can be seen as legacy or ‘analog’ and the other as contemporary or ‘digital’, the foundational alignment between the two is clear. The future of finance is a new paradigm where both the credit union model of cooperation and fairness is combined with the new digital economy where consumers control their financial lives.

The future of finance will live in the cross section of the credit union world and the DLT world. Credit unions must be prepared for this paradigm shift - which will transform everything.