Proposed SEC order to freeze, repatriate Binance.US assets

Explaining why it is not useful does not make it useful.

Those are very different reasons in my opinion.

No, it wouldn't have been possible. Because nobody (read: secondary-market game collectors) is willing to be on the other side of that deal and actually value these transferrable game licenses to the degree that they value physical games. Because, in turn, the hypothetical little by-fiat "federation" of companies willing to honor it could just decide to renege on the deal at any time and stop honoring it. (Which would probably include shutting down the database that remembers who owns what!)

The point of putting a blockchain in the middle is that the immutability of the smart contract underlying the tokenized asset guarantees that you still own the thing even if the person who sold it to you disagrees, and the person running the show backs them up†. Which is not true in the by-fiat system.

To put that in terms of non-digital assets: a country that issues a fiat currency, can declare at any point that some asset token they've issued is "no longer legal tender." Canada did it with pennies a while back. But they can't declare by fiat that a commodity has no value. Commodity values can be manipulated (see: oil prices), but they can't simply "make it go away" by withdrawing their backing from it. A commodity has inherent value, whether or not it's backed.

(How would that work, in this case? You'd need 1. IP ownership [or at least sub-licensable use] rights sold to a legal trust, 2. where that legal trust's beneficiary is a DAO; 3. where that DAO declares in its immutable articles of incorporation that non-fungible tokens issued by smart contract X represent transferrable sub-licenses of its acquired IP license; and where 4. smart contract X is immutable.)

If you've got all four of those properties satisfied, then what you've created is less like a fiat currency, and more like a commodity. The IP owner cannot revoke selling a sub-licenseable IP license to the DAO, any more than you can revoke selling your house to someone. The DAO has no path to change the rule by which it allocates IP rights through the token. And the token itself can't be tampered with to change who owns it. The only place you could affect this system would be at the level of getting the government that issued the original IP license, to declare it void. (But why would they do that? The US government didn't do it for Tolkien's dumb sale of sub-licenseable IP-rights to LOTR in the 1970s, and that was pretty much the case where you'd expect big-Hollywood lobbying to win out over the public good.)

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† Yes, technically, you can also create this guarantee just using the regular legal system, without involving blockchains — you'd issue individual IP licensing "deed" contracts to each primary-market buyer, such that they can prove they own the rights; and players could then resell these "deeds" to each-other with a notarized and registered document of sale, similar to land title transfer, so that you can prove that a given "deed" is legitimately acquired rather than stolen or forged. But that's extremely impractical — the costs of the overhead of the transfer process far outweigh the costs of the goods being transferred! In this sense, a blockchain is just a way to make this process scale for lower-value items, by making the whole "notarized transfer-of-sale ledger" into just some (digitally-signed) bits, such that people can transfer each-other IP rights — and other low-value "deedable" things — from an app on their phone, at the cost of maybe a dollar for "notarization and registration" by the chain's validators.

> Which is an entirely different metric

Of course not. If you disagree, at least try to present a coherent argument instead of just talking about squirrels. What entities do you think are missing from the list: exchanges or exchange-like entities such as on-line wallets, OTC desks, and large institutional traders

That might be overcounting even, since online wallets have nothing to do with speculation. So I'll correct myself: speculation is at most 75%, definitely a bit less.

> trying to shut down any actual data-driven discussion

I responded with exactly the data you asked for, just read it again :) If you need me to do the math for you:

75% speculation (at most) + 3% crime = 78%. 100% - 78% = 22%. 0.78:0.22 = 3.55:1 (at most)

> And then you have the audacity to ask for a source

Yes I do, since all data presented so far disagrees with your unsourced (though very strongly held) opinion.

Here's one example of how reality may be counterintuitive: High-frequency traders can make thousands of trades per second. How many people do you know who receive thousands of paychecks per second? From that alone it's plausible, obvious even, that forex speculation volume is substantially higher.

What's obvious to you isn't obvious to everyone else. That's why, in order to build a larger society, we need to set aside our biases and look at objective data in order to make informed decisions.

> Now compare that to crypto, where the entire marketing apparatus is built not upon its current value proposition but instead the idea that value will go up.

That doesn't sound too different from all modern investing. The stock market is also fueled by the illusion of the possibility infinite exponential growth. Bogleheads don't care about index funds' current value proposition. The grocery store won't accept your VTSAX as payment for a gallon of milk. You're just hoping that later you can sell your VTSAX to a greater fool.

Maybe the problem is you take everything the "marketing apparatus" says at face value? If one day you saw a TV advert for a pill that didn't work, would you also decide the entire medical industry is a scam?

> Why would I spend my time digging up data to quantify things are incredibly obvious from observation

Reality can be counterintuitive. It was once incredibly obvious that the earth was the center of the universe. Why should I spend my time digging up data when it's incredibly obvious from observation that the sun revolves around the earth?

HN is a place to engage with our curiosity, rise above anecdata, get out of our limited personal bubbles, and maybe even learn a thing or two along the way! Your immediate personal experience is not the objective reality for everyone on the planet. If you're just here to think with your emotions, ignore data, and rant about how much you hate change, you might feel more at home on Facebook or Twitter.

> when you're willing to lie and make up facts to support your narrative?

Source?

Gotta love speculation.