Rather than thinking about the businesses that currently are trying to get rich by doing ICOs, I'd like to point out that the idea of creating tokens out of thin-air, and having them obtain value purely by speculation, is an interesting system we should ponder more about.
We're now capable, thanks to these consensus systems, of creating tokens that have certain properties. For instance Bitcoin is a specific kind of token which is scarce - hence will work more like gold. Other tokens (perhaps Ether or Dogecoin) instead are not scarce at all, and new tokens continue entering the system all the time.
What's interesting about these systems is that we're converting money from the "real world" into this "speculation world". And purely because of speculation, real money is essentially being converted into this digital world.
In a very abstract way, we're essentially converting FIAT real-world money into these digital tokens that are hackable and can take on a myriad of different attributes.
To me this smells like the future - even though we're still far from it. Capitalism and the banking system we have created for ourselves is certainly not going to cope with the technological automations and the sheer amounts of jobs we're going to lose (hence automate) quickly.
Universal basic income is only part of the solution - but something like a world of tokens that behave in very different ways might be part of the solution as well. Even though we might not see the possibilities nowadays, to me it's very exciting to see how something can gain value simply because of speculation.
Perhaps in the future we'll have to redefine even what "money" is, or what "valuable" means. Again, if we're thinking about fully-automated societies, perhaps the idea of having a scarce token that only banks can create (our FIAT system) is not ideal. Perhaps the future is any kid creating his own token with some funky properties for his own videogame, and living off the "likes" he gets on some social network.
> We're now capable, thanks to these consensus systems, of creating tokens that have certain properties. For instance Bitcoin is a specific kind of token which is scarce - hence will work more like gold. Other tokens (perhaps Ether or Dogecoin) instead are not scarce at all, and new tokens continue entering the system all the time.
You talk as if we were never able of issuing digital tokens before. All you need is a MySQL database and Apache. World of warcraft has tokens, Counterstrike has tokens (skins), Airmiles has tokens, Microsoft has tokens.
Tokens are not new. Having them on the blockchain is new. And what does that give you? censorship resistance. This is the first time that these tokens can be issued and traded with very little regulatory oversight. This is because in theory, anyone can be a transaction validator, and in theory you can have pretty good privacy on the blockchain.
However, existing financial instruments (and tokens) will always be more efficient on a centralized platform, because it cuts through coordination and communication costs. But when you centralize, now you need to govern and report to authorities. So you cannot do transactions that are great for the blockchain: buying drugs, political donations, capital flight, funding activism, etc.
Censorship resistance isn't the main thing that blockchains enable; trustlessness is. If you host them on your own SQL database, people have to trust that you're acting honestly.
> creating tokens out of thin-air, and having them obtain value purely by speculation, is an interesting system we should ponder more about
There's a rich history of this in the securities world. Note that many times across multiple countries, joint-stock companies' stock ended up becoming interchangeable with government- or metal-backed currency. John Law's currency scheme for France was a sale of stock and bills, not modern cash [1].
To abstract it a bit further, the banknotes and coins you have in your wallet are also just tokens of value, just widely more accepted than cryptographic signatures. I have a hundred trillion dollars, Zimbabwean, in my wallet, and its worth comes just from the novelty. Although their government did try to enforce the value of their currency once by threat of violence, so shops were forced to give up TVs for worthless pieces of paper...
thank you for a more thoughtful response amid the knee jerking in this thread.
I think it is likely this is the future - and there is little to no mention of "asset backed tokens" which is the core of the ICO offering, essentially buying against future revenue cheaper.
We're now capable, thanks to these consensus systems, of creating tokens that have certain properties. For instance Bitcoin is a specific kind of token which is scarce - hence will work more like gold. Other tokens (perhaps Ether or Dogecoin) instead are not scarce at all, and new tokens continue entering the system all the time.
What's interesting about these systems is that we're converting money from the "real world" into this "speculation world". And purely because of speculation, real money is essentially being converted into this digital world.
In a very abstract way, we're essentially converting FIAT real-world money into these digital tokens that are hackable and can take on a myriad of different attributes.
To me this smells like the future - even though we're still far from it. Capitalism and the banking system we have created for ourselves is certainly not going to cope with the technological automations and the sheer amounts of jobs we're going to lose (hence automate) quickly.
Universal basic income is only part of the solution - but something like a world of tokens that behave in very different ways might be part of the solution as well. Even though we might not see the possibilities nowadays, to me it's very exciting to see how something can gain value simply because of speculation.
Perhaps in the future we'll have to redefine even what "money" is, or what "valuable" means. Again, if we're thinking about fully-automated societies, perhaps the idea of having a scarce token that only banks can create (our FIAT system) is not ideal. Perhaps the future is any kid creating his own token with some funky properties for his own videogame, and living off the "likes" he gets on some social network.