Yep, a stablecoin is required for leveraged longs on ETH, BTC, or whatever volatile thing you like. Stablecoins also enable you to enter a leveraged short position if you borrow the volatile asset and sell it. You could even use your crypto as collateral for a loan in the traditional fiat world if you went through a centralized exchange connected to your bank. The rates would be high, but you could do it. Good luck getting any bank to directly accept your shitcoins as collateral backing a loan! DeFi is attempting to improve upon (better, faster, cheaper) the more conservative, traditional markets. So yep it's pretty much a crypto based version. There are some nuanced differences, and there is a lot more risk in its current stage, but the goals and customers are similar. I will continue to add things here as they come up. This space has grown quickly this year and new projects seem to pop up all the time so it should be interesting to see where it goes.