I read your thinking as being centered around transaction costs, is that right? That cryptocurrencies can lower the transaction costs associated with the funding of productive endeavors.
This seems right to me. We can avoid things like accredited investor status and allow small amounts of capital to be invested without needing much legal overhead. And (for better or worse), ventures funded this way will also have a market price and never be private in the sense of today.
Of course, ICOs or whatever they morph into will need to be much more like securities than they were 2 years ago. Investing without actual equity makes little sense to me. To make these more reasonable, companies will need to know they aren't breaking securities laws when they issue. Once they know that, the ICOs can look less insane.
I buy the transaction cost argument in this sense. But I think there might be too many other issues for this to come about. Though I'm currently not confident enough in bill or bear status to bet either way.
Let's grant that scaling can be solved and volatility will not remain incredible like today. I think there are maybe deeper issues.
There's a lot of emphasis on 3rd party risk mitigation in the crypto world. But this new world reopens more 2nd party risk than it minimizes 3rd party risk to my first approximation.
Governments exist as dispute resolvers and preventers (military/police and laws/rules being the functions a government must have to be a government). They protect citizens from outside threats, but much more often from each other. In crypto, the permanence of a transaction is a primitive. But this makes scamming and various forms of theft even more attractive. People like the comfortable feeling of a government protecting them from financial fraud. If cryptocurrencies became the main currencies, I think they won't be able to look as loose and free as they do today. Even ignoring the funding of criminal activity, people want a way to reverse bad faith transactions. They'll demand oversight I think.
It's hard for me to imagine the hypothetical end state crypto financial world being anywhere near as libertarian-feeling as today's cryptocurrencies. Digital money is a government's dream. A government issued or one in which governments have a back door allows perfect monitoring of transactions and monetary policy controls.
The whole thing just seems too early to be predictable or investable to me. It's just for momentum trading today in my current view.
Though this is an idea space that forces me to change my mind back and forth. It's too complex to remain a settled, comfortable member of the landscape.
This seems right to me. We can avoid things like accredited investor status and allow small amounts of capital to be invested without needing much legal overhead. And (for better or worse), ventures funded this way will also have a market price and never be private in the sense of today.
Of course, ICOs or whatever they morph into will need to be much more like securities than they were 2 years ago. Investing without actual equity makes little sense to me. To make these more reasonable, companies will need to know they aren't breaking securities laws when they issue. Once they know that, the ICOs can look less insane.
I buy the transaction cost argument in this sense. But I think there might be too many other issues for this to come about. Though I'm currently not confident enough in bill or bear status to bet either way.
Let's grant that scaling can be solved and volatility will not remain incredible like today. I think there are maybe deeper issues.
There's a lot of emphasis on 3rd party risk mitigation in the crypto world. But this new world reopens more 2nd party risk than it minimizes 3rd party risk to my first approximation.
Governments exist as dispute resolvers and preventers (military/police and laws/rules being the functions a government must have to be a government). They protect citizens from outside threats, but much more often from each other. In crypto, the permanence of a transaction is a primitive. But this makes scamming and various forms of theft even more attractive. People like the comfortable feeling of a government protecting them from financial fraud. If cryptocurrencies became the main currencies, I think they won't be able to look as loose and free as they do today. Even ignoring the funding of criminal activity, people want a way to reverse bad faith transactions. They'll demand oversight I think.
It's hard for me to imagine the hypothetical end state crypto financial world being anywhere near as libertarian-feeling as today's cryptocurrencies. Digital money is a government's dream. A government issued or one in which governments have a back door allows perfect monitoring of transactions and monetary policy controls.
The whole thing just seems too early to be predictable or investable to me. It's just for momentum trading today in my current view.
Though this is an idea space that forces me to change my mind back and forth. It's too complex to remain a settled, comfortable member of the landscape.