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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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chapotraphouse
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The problem here is that the vast majority of crypto trading occurs "off chain". Meaning via intermediaries like Coinbase, which trade on internal databases, exactly like existing securities. The history of crypto is full of examples of exchanges doing exactly this sort of market manipulation. Not to mention insider trading, front running their order books and maintaining fractional reserves.
The elimination of fraud would remain a social and legal issue, the technology used to keep the books just isn't important. If the government can't prevent a specific type of fraud now, it wouldn't be able to with tokenized securities either.
You're talking about cryptocurrencies, but Zuberi is proposing making public stocks serialized and tracking trades on a public ledger. While that would prevent a lot of market abuse, its effectiveness is of course why it would never be implemented.
I understand that, but my point I perhaps didn't make very well is that the implementation on a public ledger is only as good as the legislation which forces you to use said ledger in good faith. If I can say "I'll hold a bunch of tokens in trust and you can all trade them virtually on my system, then we'll settle up later" then the tech being used to maintain the ledger doesn't matter. That's how crypto works because otherwise you'd need to pay exorbitant transaction fees for every trade because of the expense of maintaining the security of the network, I don't get how you'd stop this from being an issue with stocks.
Surely that legislation is the exact thing Zuberi is proposing? If course it would need to be free of loopholes to be effective. I think we're all agreeing
Edit lol I just saw Zuberi other comments. Zub bby this is a fantasy thought experiment that could maybe be used by some sort of far future coalition of anarchist collectives or something, it will never and could never be made into reality here
I agree, but if the anti fraud measures are legal in nature then what purpose does blockchain serve? You could take a traditional database and make it cryptographically signed and publicly verifiable and it wouldn’t need miners burning as much electricity as Ireland to maintain it because it could be maintained by organisations bound by regulations. It wouldn’t be blockchain though, or it would be a blockchain so distorted the name would cease to mean anything.
Basically if the political will existed to legislate a secure blockchain solution, the blockchain part would be necessarily redundant. That’s what I’m trying to say.
Of course it’s all academic because the political will doesn’t exist and as you allude to, capitalism will need to fall before it does.
I think this idea got started by people who don't trust the government and can see themselves being robbed from by financial institutions blatantly breaking and abusing rules, but they don't have the ideological framework to imagine something substantially different/trustworthy so they invent this technology as a bandaid fix for the specific problem of information transparency.
And the new ethereum proof of stake uses a fraction of the energy but is still considered a block chain.
Absolutely, it’s tech-fetishism (in the sense of commodity fetishism) combined with capitalist realism. They identify a very real problem, but they cannot believe that it is inherent to capitalism and can only be solved by its ending.
Edit: Proof of stake had inherent problems also, it removes the “fairness” of verification and ties the ability to do so directly to one’s investment.
"Hey capitalists, I made this cool thing to prevent you from stealing! Do you like it?
...why is my car making this weird noi-"
Just to entertain the idea for a second that some shitcoin will actually level the global market. Let's ignore the fact that there are plenty of ways to re-annonymize coins and all the other problems with it.
What would compel any holder of large capital to use it? What is the fulcrum of power that will stop these entities from using fiat currencies? If the global system right now benefits them so much (it does) why would they give it up and use something that doesn't?
This is fanfiction. There's no analysis of power, no analysis of capital, no understanding of the overwhelming problems with any blockchain technology.
And worse it's boring. If you're going to be a leftist crank about some weird thing, do aliens or something
Now hold on, block chains are totally capable of running programs. Smart contracts are a thing. This could be implemented, technically, in some fantasy world where things happen for no reason. Cranking about cryptography is cool and good.
Dont forget that in your fantasy world the program code would have to have 0 bugs!
The periphery will simply align themselves with the existing Chinese pole of influence, why the need for a block chain? Surely a totally new economic technology would take decades to legislate, specify, code, verify, and implement? There's no way it happens as a reaction to something, it would be like a space race level of effort
This would be an objectively good thing for retail traders in a few ways, though there'd be some hilarious issues from making stocks into digital bearer bonds - what do you do if I steal your Google coins, or if you die while holding them in a wallet with a lost key? Any answer that's not "too bad lol" can only mean giving terrifying power to a DAO - or right back to the SEC
Maybe not over the stock market, but they certainly had enough to send a lot of web 3 nerds running