|
Tokens are a novel capital formation mechanism. Because tokens are programmable and blockchain native, they are qualitatively superior to other forms of "fractionalized ownership", such as a stock certificate, for example. A token can be used as an authentication mechanic for a piece of software. It can be used as a voting mechanic in a DAO, for example. You might argue that voting is the purpose of stock certificates, but in practice, it's quite impractical to participate in corporate politics. You generally have to attend an annual stockholder's meeting and put you vote forward there, and even then, you only get to vote on the Board of Directors (and this is rarely used in practice). In DAOs, it's far more similar to open source software development. People create an improvement proposal and pitch the idea in the forums and chat rooms for the project, and try to drum up enough support, and then it will go to a vote, and depending on how the DAO is set up, either you do an initial temperature check vote followed by a final implementation by the core team, or someone actually submits a PR to merge into the DAO source code and users vote on that code directly. The transparency of the treasury mechanics is also far more superior to anything else in the corporate world. With a DAO, I know at all times, precisely how much is in the treasury, how they've spent their funds in the past, what mechanics and rules guard that treasury, etc. It's all inspectable and visible on-chain. That makes a qualitative difference in the amount of trust you can generate among a group of dispersed strangers from potentially all corners of the earth, and it allows them to proceed in a productive manner in such a way that was not possible except for largely through groups of close-knit people working within a single jurisdiction (for the most part). Open source does work this way (which has also had a monetization problem), but pair open source ideals with open source money and open source treasury management, and you get something that is powerful in the same way that Linux is powerful for computing. Except it unlocks this type of coordination for things beyond software development. It encompasses everything, from art, entertainment, charity, politics, business, etc. It's a sea change in the ability to coordinate human beings and capital across distances and to incentivize people to participate in a more sustainable way. But stable coins of course, also solve a problem in and of themselves, because they make dollar-denominated token mechanics possible. If you want to program a smart contract in such a way that the terms and conditions and programmed rules depend on dollars as a base pair, you need stable coins. Programmable money is powerful for all the reasons above (it can be held in a smart contract, governed by a DAO, controlled by a multisig or by DAO votes or by certain boolean conditions being met) and more. It's also borderless, it's as easy to use in Argentina as it is in Kentucky. And slippage and liquidity are very real problems that do exist in traditional markets, such as stock markets. We've seen the traditional system mechanics breakdown, like what happened with GameStop earlier this year, when trading was halted due to liquidity issues. At any rate, powerful stuff here, it's here to stay, and it will change everything. |