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Tokenization of physical assets sounds kinda dumb. Say you tokenize a house. What happens if you loose the private keys? What happens if the last “legal” (on paper) owner claims it? Basically, the tokenization is useless. The house is still subject to whatever jurisdiction is in. And the smart contract can say whatever, but that does not make it true.
What's not so obvious is for virtual assets or service tokens. A good example is cashu. Where tokenizing Bitcoin has the advantages of allowing the users to transact with it “without the mint's permission”. This could be applied similarly for concert tickets or API credits.
For example, the biggest problem of concert ticket reselling is trusting that other copies of the PDF with the QR code won't be used before the one you bought. Or that you won't have problems at the entry because the ticket is not in your name. A mint that allows users to transact between them preventing double spending and fungibility would solve this.
But for some reason shitcoiners are obsessed on tokenizing physical assets or company shares. Where the only benefit that tokenizing could bring is avoiding regulations (until they update the laws).
So, what's your take on tokenization?
If you believe states will adopt bitcoin then securities regulation will collapse because states won't be able to defend the position that you must have permission to issue a public security. The reason for that is the permissioned system is to avoid an mid-90s Albania scenario where the entire economy is dominated by frivolous securities, and government is incentivised to pump the market be debasing the denominator.
Arguably that is what clown world is, ironically, and Bitcoin is the cure even though it is labelled part of the disease, but I digress.
So what happens when the denominator cannot be debased, and is considered a single source of monetary truth?
Well governments, who are then unable juice the economy with liquidity without spooking their citizens, start engaging in serious cost cutting and efficiency programmes. One of those is to cut legal costs and start adjudicating and enforcing other kinds of disputes based upon private key control. Yes, private keys can be lost or stolen, but the legal system will still be in place to adjudicate where there isn't a clear means of determining who is in control of the private keys.
Obviously Bitcoiners believe that future generations will be perfectly capable of managing private keys securely, and we'll go through a transition.
Now, the nub of the question is what happens when anyone can issue a security without being sanctioned by government? Well in the past they have proliferated widely, even on earlier technology platforms, pre-internet. In principle it would completely change debt markets at a local and global level. People short of Bitcoin, but with other assets like houses, or their skills, or corporate equity. They could go to a notary and sign a contract that associates whatever it with a specific public key, which is controlled by them (this is a gross simplification). Basically they agree to tokenise the asset with a regular contract. From that point the asset's ownership is determined by control of the private key.
Even small items could be tokenised in order to determine ownership in case of theft, based upon serial numbers or other unique identifiers of the object. Yeah, you still need police, but their jobs are a whole lot easier and you don't need receipts. Shops would tokenise expensive items at point of sale.
In this environment everything depends upon reputation, and brand. Companies issue public securities at foundation, so stocks are perfectly liquid. Teenagers issue securities in order to generate the capital to go to university or pursue apprenticeships. Tokenisation entirely replaces credit scores and other centralised trust systems. If investors see you issuing new tokens it'll debase the early issuance, meaning your securities will get sold off without justification. It'll be completely normalised.
I think that Trump and Larry Fink and others understand this. It will take 50 years maybe, but this is the likely outcome of a bitcoin standard.
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If we refering to the tokenisation we have today, apart from stablecoins and creating a secondary forex market that is going balls deep 24/7 i'm not sure what else there is to do with it
RWA, stocks, bonds, art whatever, that can all be done client side or some private ledger and would be better since you can manage who gets access, vetting the owners and being able to offer recovery and the token just acts like another claim option like cool here's the certificate of ownership and we'll pop you a token too for the funzies
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Agreed.
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41 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 30 May
It's a bit of a taboo subject in the bitcoin community.
I'm sure tokenizing assets will eventually happen. I haven't seen one working so far.
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Tokenization, as we know it today, has more of a legal utility within our system. At the international level, the law recognizes three types of tokens: a token (like a casino chip), which has a specific use; a token (like a bank PIN), which serves as an access credential; and tokens that hold economic value, which are referred to as digital assets.
Regarding the example mentioned, the OP has a point—tokenization today primarily serves to guarantee the immutability of a contract or object in the real world, preventing duplication of the object to be audited or verified. However, returning to the main point, these objects must be backed by a legal contract to facilitate legal processes. I’m not against tokenization, but I don’t see much usability today unless the legal frameworks are adapted to support its use.
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