Is the current crypto depression a result of the usual apprehension or, worse, already an indifference? In such an environment, in the darkness of distrust, the ability of the tokenised fund to demonstrate a connection with concepts, things, and people that are of great value in the “traditional sense” becomes extremely important.
By the end of 2018, one can sense a lot of idling in the air. Most people keep silent, but almost everyone is very curious: what will make the prices of crypto-assets move from this dead despondency? Is the current depression a result of the usual apprehension or, worse, already an indifference?
The number of people involved is great; the crypto-universe has reached the size of a small nation economy. There is a room for different agendas and contradicting narratives. There are radically varying views. Approaches and recipes to overcome the crisis are many. Some people just do not believe in any prices. Many point out the fact that the pace of the technology development wasn’t affected by the recent bubble: the funding surplus never found a way to those who are endowed with truly creative potential; the money has settled in the hands of fraudsters and relatively honest mediocrity. From this standpoint, now investments [in any form] should be decoupled from the core crypto development. It is doubtful that this will change anything and heal the lack of enthusiasm. Just look at the blockchain projects supervised by large corporations. They never come into contact with the capital market and never had tradable tokens, but still new members are not signing up and old ones are continuing to run away.
Many people believe that prices should still go much lower to “punish those responsible for the failure.” Accusers are rightly pointing out that to improve the situation, the cause of the disease must be uprooted, just as the Mt. Gox factor was eliminated at its time. Speaking directly, before a significant part of ICO organisers are arrested, the world will not believe in crypto again. Quite possibly, something like this will happen: the bear market will continue for many months, the US SEC will reach out to hundreds of those behind the most nefarious scams, and multiple collective lawsuits will emerge when ICO investors self-organise and realise that at least part of the money is quite possible to return. To do this, it is enough [using the very tokens that turned investors’ money into dust] to fill special smart contracts with a confirmed intention to fight, so that some “founders” chicken out, sell lambos, and distribute the remains, while the others are torn apart by wolf-lawyers.
Some people believe it is necessary to start from scratch. Probably the best candidate for the role of the new locomotive is the tokenisation of ordinary securities and other formal assets and liabilities.
This approach is at least sensible and pragmatic. But despite being very new, the discipline of STO (security token offering) is already pretty dirty. Among about seventy projects positioning themselves as providers of token placements or tokenised funds, more than half sell “platform tokens”, which often are not even securities. Those tokens (again!) do not create responsibility for anyone. They call up projects to these platforms, promising some magical crypto-liquidity. No one says, though, that there is no real marker to determine the date of occurrence of such liquidity. For example, the supposedly sensational Maltese project (“Blockchain Nation”, no more, no less), in practice, has only legalised ICOs. That is nothing new. In the Malta case, few rich lobbyists (mainly, crypto-exchanges with Chinese roots) had specific reasons and deadlines to rush — they were simply driven off from wherever they were grazing. The legislators were not facing serious obstacles, they did not have to interfere with existing interests of anyone so the new legislation has been pushed through in a matter of months. Unlike that, attempts to place tokens on conventional regulated securities exchanges will affect both the vital business interests and the boundaries of many people’s professional ethics, so that experiment will be many times more difficult. Apparently, the marketed optimism of pseudo-STO platforms strongly resembles an attempt to change shoes mid-jump and turn the corpses of ICO’s into walking zombies.
Another noticeable fraction of providers and funds is busy with sophisticatedly stitching frankensteins from the usual “bodies”: instead of flourishing the stock price and paying dividends, they invent stunts to “buy back and burn”, to force payments in tokens by providing insane discounts that harm the business. We don’t look down to the advantages of tokenisation: when the time comes, the technology will greatly reduce friction in many markets. However, it is very alarming that no one is now helping investors to realise that tokens, when applied to real securities, are merely a packaging tool, just like “paper or plastic” at a grocery. It is an important part of the marketing set, but tokens are not something that can define the business or even offer a new substrate for it, as many try to put it. Everything effective and fair in the field of equity and bonds was already invented, and very long time ago. This leads us to a very simple conclusion: any “revolutionary” idea in this area, and any atypical behaviour of organisers, are signs of fraud.
In such an environment, in the darkness of distrust, the ability of the tokenised fund to demonstrate a connection with concepts, things, and people that are of great value in the “traditional sense” becomes extremely important. Quality real estate in French Riviera is, perhaps, one of the most suitable symbols.