this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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A tokenized security is the same thing as a tokenized jpeg. Blockchain has no control over what happens outside it.
I could create a token and say it refers to my Ferrari. Obviously I don’t own a Ferrari, but what can the blockchain do about it? To ensure the token is legitimate, some trusted authority must ensure the Ferrari really exists in the physical reality. Suddenly blockchain doesn’t “eliminate the need for accountants”.
And whenever I want to sell the token, someone must ensure I still own the Ferrari. Who knows, maybe I crashed the Ferrari somewhere in the forest?
Same goes for any asset - including carbon offsets, stocks and bonds. Blockchain is completely unable to say anything about the state of the physical reality.
We still beat the same tired old drums about NFTs because if it doesn’t work for jpegs, it doesn’t work for anything.
You wrote all that out and didn't really think about what you wrote, because you actually proved my point. Yes, they are the same thing, but the difference is one has no value (a digital picture of a monkey) and one has value (a stock in, say, Apple). UNLIKE FTX - the tokenized securities that would be verifiable would be issued directly by the company, so each stock the company issues is done so as an NFT token. You can verify whether it is the company's actual stock or not because it is an NFT, so it would be traceable all the way back to the company and its initial issuance.
Consider what it is like buying one share of Apple today. Think about it. If you buy one share of Apple from Schwab or something, how do you know you actually received on share of Apple? It says you have one share on the Schwab site, but you are just taking their word for it, and they are taking their brokerages word for it, and they are taking the market makers word for it, and they are taking . . . . In fact, in most cases you don't even own that stock (you can find out based on how you are taxed when the company issues a dividend - if it is a qualifying dividend, but you owe normal income taxes on it, congratulations, you never even owned the share). Our entire current "mainstream" stock market is based on beneficial ownership, which is the biggest "trust me bro" in history.
However, if the transaction was done on an open, distributed ledger, it is wholly verifiable. NFT goes directly from company to each owner and the entire transaction history is visible, verifiable, and instantaneous.
As already explained, you don't know what you're paying for with an NFT until a trusted authority has said that they are indeed the issuer of that NFT contract. If you can't know what you're paying for on Schwab it doesn't matter if they sell you a classical contract or an NFT. Either Apple said "these people are selling the real deal on this page on their site" or they did not. NFT only really adds the ability to keep tracking the token as it gets resold elsewhere, but this is solvable without blockchains if the market was to implement stuff like federated transparency logs.
In this case, the NFT would only be issued by the actual issuing company or its agent. This is how it works today but instead of NFTs it is paper certificates or, worse, a ledger entry why the issuing agent that is then confirmed with the centralized shared deposit uprise which actually owns most of the real shares. In most cases, especially in the trading platforms where you can execute free trades, you are just a beneficial owner and not an actual owner of the underlying security. With an NFT there would be no need for beneficial ownership at all anymore. It’s not the only way to do it, it’s just a utility like the others you mentioned, but it is a legitimate use case.
But it's achievable without any NFT