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▲ jerf 5 hours ago

Stocks are already tokens. "Tokenizing" stocks makes no sense, if one assumes quite reasonably that "tokenization" involves giving token-ness to something that was not already a token. What it is is wrapping what is already a token in another token, mostly so the second token can get around the limitations of the first. But some of those limitations are incidental and can be eliminated at any time by the underlying token provider, mostly because nothing stops a conventional stock market from being tradeable 24/7. They already are if you're in the club anyhow, per all the "aftermarket" and "pre-market" trading you hear about around quarterly release times.

The rest of the limitations are regulatory, and if the wrapping token can get access to regulatory approval to do their thing, so can the stocks.

The whole thing feels skeevy as all get out to me. It feels like someone telling me that they'll be happy to hold my mortgage between me and the current holder. There is no good reason for that. Frankly there is already a disturbing amount of indirection in the way you don't actually own the stocks you think you do, but they're held on behalf of you on behalf of your broker at the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. Adding another layer of indirection makes me worry about the motives of the people who are very excited about being that layer.

▲keeda 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Stocks are already tokens.

If it's not happening on a GPU, is it really a "token"? ;-)

▲ForHackernews 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't think stocks are tokens? Stocks are shares in a company: some fractional ownership that carries legal rights and a claim on assets.

Crypto tokens are just some meaningless entries on a blockchain.

▲chrisco255 3 hours ago | parent [-]

And your bank account balance is some meaningless entries in a SQL database

▲ForHackernews 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Again, that's not true. As a matter of law, a bank balance is a debt the bank owes to you. An NFT or a bitcoin is a row in a spreadsheet that records the exchange of notional nothings.