Crowdfunding And The Myth Of Disintermediation
Crowdfunding And The Myth Of Disintermediation

Summary/Abstract: Most commonly crowdfunding (peer-to-peer and peer-to-business lending in particular) is classified as a new phenomenon in financial market, which come within the equally new aggregates of ‘sharing economy’ and/or ‘disruptive innovation’ and/or ‘FinTech’. More rarely it is presented as an example of ongoing process of disintermediation – disposal of a middleman between lenders and borrowers. This article is an attempt to substantiate several theses: (i) that primary financial instruments issued by debt-based crowdfunding platforms, bearing strong resemblance used in Islamic banking Mudaraba and Musharaka contracts, is nothing new in the world of finance; (ii) that more sophisticated instruments, created by crowdfunding platforms, give grounds to qualify this business model as a component of shadow banking; (iii) that contrary to the popular statement that ‘peer-to-peer lending cuts the institutional “middleman” and reduce costs, in reality crowdfunding platforms do not provide any sizeable reduction of borrowing costs and, per contra, contribute to the strengthening and expansion of the banking system.

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