Traditional credit hides a pile of spreads. Funding cost. Balance-sheet allocation. Underwriting. The cost of acquiring the customer. Operations and reporting. Fees at each institution in the chain. Capital buffers. Servicing. Profit on top of profit. Some of those are real risk. Some are the rent charged for sitting between the saver and the borrower.
Open infrastructure does not delete credit risk, default or regulation. It can unbundle the pile. The firm that owns the customer does not have to be the firm that takes the credit, warehouses the liquidity, or services the loan. Once those are separate, they can be competed.