Is tokenisation a bad word in bitcoin maxi circles \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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Is tokenisation a bad word in bitcoin maxi circles

1306 sats \ 15 comments \ @fourrules 3h bitcoin

I'm a bitcoin maxi, but I feel many/most Bitcoiners think tokenisation is just another medium for scams, which it has been. I want to know if my view is shared generally in these circles, or if it's novel.

I have no problem with tokenisation. Tokens are debt, you buy tokens from systems that don't have any money but do have potential to earn money (bitcoin) in the future and can therefore buy back the token or roll over the debt.

But once the debt is paid the person or machine or institution is fully solvent they can pay out in actual money rather than continuing to issue tokens, the goal is always to pay down, so as not to get labelled a Ponzi.

Tokens could be issued to cover demand cycles where they have not saved enough money in good times but are still solvent, if there is likely to be an uptick in demand.

But tokenisation can only work on the other side of the transition to a Bitcoin standard because when denominated in fiat there is a political incentive to debase the currency like Albania in the mid-90s. This is why we have securities laws. Tokens are a type of security, and those have to be regulated on a fiat standard to ensure proper disclosures. In a decentralised system you require the market to police fraud and softer kinds of bad behaviour, bit since governments are both constituted of and in themselves market participants that creates a perverse incentive if they can influence monetary policy. That's why central banks are in such uneasy partnerships with governments, required to perform certain functions of government and therefore subject to politics, while also being responsible for upholding the integrity of the currency.

In Albania politicians and bureaucrats pumped stock prices to make citizens feel wealthier by debasing the national currency, similar to how house prices were pumped in the 00s in Europe and America, or how they used monetary policy to pay the population to be compliant, only to steal the money back in inflation. Whatever the dominant asset is at the time, people vote for politicians to influence policy in favour of their assets, even if it's just a feeling of getting wealthier.

Bitcoin bootloads itself via that incentive, putting politicians in office who are public bitcoin champions, or at least not opposed to us and I'm favour of deregulation. But the end game is that this entire game of debasing the currency to pump asset prices is impossible, once bitcoin is the unit of account, it's become recognised as the most stable money with better monetary properties than the incumbent standard.

At that point it's possible to completely deregulate the securities market and literally anything or anyone can issue their own token without the power to influence a class of people to pump the token they issue, and they don't need to comply with securities laws to disclose their earnings or anything like that. Regulation privatised, where capital allocators pay systems to enforce compliance with the standards of disclosure they want, but people are free to invest in hyper-local or distributed or niche token issuers if there is sufficient information asymmetry to justify the risk of foregoing standards of disclosure.

A student could issue a token to pay for college buy back the token with their future salary. Universities could use endowments to buy those tokens, aligning incentives in education. Similar models could apply to machinery, cars in service businesses like transport, local devolved governments formed out of separatist governments from bankrupted states. Starter homes could be funded by tokens issued by families who collateralise real assets like bitcoin or the underlying land.

It's all to play for, but not until we are on a bitcoin standard, which could be 20 years away. Anyone disagree?

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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby 2h

Tokenization, similar to stablecoins, could be useful for those without access to the US financial system. Essentially it is just an onchain broker with less investor protection. Someone is going to custody the underlying (say 1 share of apple stock) and issue a token representing it. Difference is if I am buying tokens representing US equities offshore I am probably doing so with a pretty significant "trust me bro" risk and some technical risk. Tokenized assets should probably trade at a discount to the underlying.

So if I am outside of the US financial system I am probably just better off holding cash in stablecoins and buying bitcoin instead of tokenized assets.

40 sats \ 2 replies \ @fourrules OP 2h

I don't think you're really fully considering the implications of a bitcoin standard and what it means for debt markets. I mentioned student debt because it's clearly a market distorted to the point of breaking, and an alternative tokenised model will clearly take over.

Debt markets are inherently about the future, and anything that involves future payouts, including equities, involve trust. You can use a Russell conjugate with the phrase "trust me bro", but there is no way out of trust.

A bitcoin standard will blur the line between what is inside and outside the US financial system.

I think you're thinking 2-5 years out, and I'm trying to speculate on 20-50 years out.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 1h

Yes I am speculating more in the next decade or so. It is hard to predict what will occur over the next 20-50 years.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @fourrules OP 1h

I don't think it's hard to predict. If you look at what happened in deregulated securities markets it's easy to predict what would have happened if they weren't able to debase the denominator. Those securities markets would have just dominated debt markets and generated a huge variety of financial instruments for extremely niche situations that involved asymmetric information, and those would have been packaged and sold as derivatives over time.

We live in a world polluted by motivated reasoning so basic speculation feels difficult, but it's really not.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 1h

I consider myself a Bitcoin maxi because I consider it the only digital token that is truly decentralised and therefore does not require trust in any third party. Bitcoin is thus analogous to digital gold. However I do not assume as you do that a Bitcoin Standard will be the dominant monetary system in the future. It seems very unlikely to be although it is theoretically possible- simply because of the dynamics of political and economic systems. Some assume the decline of the USD must result in the rise of Bitcoin without factoring the significance of nation states and political power structures. The USD is the currently dominant monetary system because the USA has been the dominant economic and military power since WW2. Based on the current world economy China appears most likely to dominate both economic and military power in the near future. The USA is already unable to impose its will upon China, having been forced to back down on its attempts to bully China with threats of tariffs because China already controls the supply chains of so many strategic commodities and components essential to US economy and military. You also fail to understand that even if a Bitcoin Standard monetary system were to succeed the USD the nature of the system would fundamentally change- student loans would no longer be a practical method of funding education- as debt would no longer be a means by which the state and banks could issue capital funding. Equally under a true Bitcoin Standard the degree of fiat debt leverage over real estate would be hugely reduced because the ability and incentive for banks to issue such fiat debt sourced capital funding would be removed. If you want to imagine a true Bitcoin Standard monetary system it is necessary to understand the fundamental difference between Bitcoin as a currency and fiat. Governments and bankers cannot issue Bitcoins as debt.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @fourrules OP 1h

Very strange comment.

I take some of your points, but in a multi-polar world a bitcoin standard is inevitable. The nature of governments is to distrust each other, including their tokens. In that context the dynamics of politics and economics disfavours fiat over the long-term.

I thought that was a basic tenet of being a bitcoin maxi, but maybe there are other kinds of people calling themselves maxis, who think it a maximal moral prerogative to own bitcoin or something like that.

But I assume the decline of the USD must result in the rise of Bitcoin BY factoring the significance of nation states and political power structures.

China can't issue the world reserve currency without hollowing out it's own manufacturing base the way the US did, which it needs to pacify it's massive labour force. Revolutions in China are extremely ugly. In that context no other country with accept the yuan as the denominator of debt or medium of international settlement. You are a very rare soul if you think that is the trajectory we're on.

Why would the US need to impose it's will on China for a combination of a bitcoin-gold standard to emerge in international trade? Surely it's the opposite, a bitcoin-gold standard emerges from a weak US.

I also perfectly understand that if a Bitcoin Standard monetary system were to succeed the USD the nature of the system would fundamentally change- student loans would no longer be a practical method of funding education- as traditional debt markets would no longer be a means by which the state and banks could issue capital funding, hence tokenisation would dominate.

The rest of your comment has very little relationship with my comments, I would find it difficult to respond, it's very confused.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Solomonsatoshi 44m

You ignore the massive power that fiat delivers governments versus the massive LOSS of POWER that a Bitcoin Standard implies. The USA today is demonstrably ONLY viable because of its addiction to the fiat debt issuance that is the extraordinary privilege derived from being the issuer of the global reserve currency- and the USD being a full fiat construct. Under a Bitcoin Standard that extraordinary privilege evaporates and the USA would be very swiftly insolvent- being unable to sustain both trade and fiscal deficits that have become chronic over the last 50 years. In contrast China today dominates global trade in manufactured goods and commodities. China can and has already demonstrated that the USA is dependent upon its supply chains. Most US military supply chains are now dependent upon Chinese supply chains. If China turns them off USA is unable to make the weapons and systems it relies upon to dominate global institutions, resources, law and protocols. China has in turn built its mercantile dominance upon sound application of fiat money- many BTC Maxis may not understand that fiat applied with discipline and strategy is a potent economic leveraging tool. The Chinese government has consistently used fiat monetary leverage to direct capital toward productive assets and infrastructure- in contrast the US has allowed bankers to allocate an ever increasing ratio of fiat debt issuance toward non productive speculative assets - primarily real estate- which becomes a parasitic debt burden. Monetary dominance has historically always followed from trade and military dominance. At least since the time of Rome, if not before. China today dominates global trade. China must now also gain military dominance to ensure its control over trade routes and commodity supplies. This process is now unfolding as the US reduces its military power projection and China exerts its own- via proxies like Iran and Russia and via the construction of global trade and transport infrastructure known ans the Belt and Road. China has no logical need or incentive to adopt a Bitcoin Standard- quite the opposite. China is also in no hurry to become the issuer of the global reserve currency but to some extent it is already the case that nearly all nations need to trade with China or suffer significant loss of economic advantage due to China paying the best price for commodities and charging the least price for manufactured goods. With annual trade surpluses of over a Trillion USD China can and is accumulating global strategic assets and the power that goes with that, and allies with military ability, like Russia that enable the enforcement of property rights that is required for a prosperous empire. It is necessary to think in a different way to the current highly financialised US model of hegemony and think in a more mercantile mindset to understand Chinas strategic approach to gaining global dominance- they will seek to avoid some of the structural pitfalls that the US fell into. Certainly there may be a marginal case for Bitcoin but given the almost complete success of the commoditisation of Bitcoin and its near complete failure to gain use as a MoE, Bitcoin is marginalised as a speculative commodity and does not look like it will succeed in gaining the dominance of MoE adoption that is needed to a true Bitcoin Standard.

Finally, if a Bitcoin Standard does overcome the state power imperatives that fiat money supports, then a very different economic and monetary model would develop to the highly debt leveraged and dependent financial model that currently operates via the fiat USD.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fourrules OP 4m

I'm not ignoring that at all, in any way. When a person or institution loses power then do it by choice, they don't give it up freely, they just lose it. Circumstances change, the ground shifts beneath their feet, the road runs out and they hit a wall.

The exorbitant privilege of the US government is ending. This is not surprising, it's a system only 50 years old, an aberration, a blip in financial history, a fleeting moment.

That moment is nearly over.

And none of your comments on China logically infer that the yuan will be adopted as a world reserve currency or medium for international settlements, given the exorbitant privilege this would give to China, which has already demolished everyone else's manufacturing base.

China has no logical need or incentive to adopt a Bitcoin Standard- quite the opposite.

China won't have a choice, no more than they had a choice of adopting the US standard. They'll try gold, obviously, but settlement is slow too slow for modern economies and inevitably a new gold standard leads directly to a bitcoin standard, whether the CCP likes it or not.

It is necessary for YOU to think in a different way to understand that the reaction of the incumbent system obviously meant that Bitcoin had to become a store of value before a medium of exchange, but a store of value that has monetary properties will inevitably become a medium of exchange, and then a unit of account.

If a Bitcoin Standard does overcome the state power imperatives that fiat money supports, then a very different economic and monetary model would develop, but people will always bet on the future and tokenisation is the most efficient vehicle for debt markets.

I don't think you have a good grasp of this topic so this is my last comment.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 1h

By tokens, it sounds like you mean some kind of Smart-IOU?

I think the biggest issue is dealing with contingencies in which repayment of the token is or can't be made.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fourrules OP 1h

Token values can go to zero as the issuer is deemed unlikely to pay, due to death or reputation damage or unfortunate accident. I don't think you have to deal with those contingencies because of they don't pay it off they will find it more difficult to issue new tokens in the future. That's the free market.

Maybe there is a contract that collateralises the token in some way, like "I'll pay it off with labour if I can't pay it with bitcoin" or "this token is issued to build an extension on my house, and if I don't buy it back by a certain date the owner of the town owns a portion of the land under my house, which they'll get back on sale on the land".

You'd need the existing system to enforce these contracts, but they are just contracts, they don't have to be smart.

The difference is that tokenisation systems can be built on more or less decentralised self-regulating blockchains like Bitcoin or Solana, meaning issuance is just a matter of software. If they are not collateralised by more than your reputation (and many won't be, I can buy a new Mac today on credit without collateralising the loan) then you don't additional legal agreements.

Of course legal agreements can be boiler plate or generated on the fly without paying lawyers, so software can help people add more sophisticated collateral agreements, one would assume there would be legal experts in the background helping to create the boiler plate and informing how the contracts are generated.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @ladyluck 2h

I appreciate the long term thinking, but 20 years feels optimistic for full Bitcoin standardization. Even if we get there, won't network effects and early adopter advantages still create inequality issues?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fourrules OP 2h

I think things happen slowly then suddenly. We live in a dramatically different world to 2005.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @fourrules OP 2h

You can't eat bitcoin. I expect anyone with marketable skills or other hard assets will always be able to get bitcoin without being impoverished slaves. I think HODLers dramatically overestimate their purchasing power relative to plumbers or very promising students.

Inequality will decrease over time as the rich can't put their thumbs on the scale by influencing monetary policy.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ladyluck 2h

You can’t eat Bitcoin is true, but neither can you eat dollars - what matters is exchange for goods and services

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fourrules OP 2h

I don't understand your point. I'm talking about tokenisation on a bitcoin standard, not a fiat standard.