21–30 of 310 posts
You'll meet a younger doctor who complains heavily about student debt and how impossible life in the US is. I'll offer to write a check for the debt in return for a negotiated percentage of their income from now on. Silence ensues.
"Isn't this the same as traditional student debt or, worse, indentured servitude? Not really" Saying "not really" doesn't make something so. This is, literary indentured servitude. By definition.
There’s literally nothing in this article that you couldn’t replace “token” or “coin” with “contract” or “membership” and have it work exactly the same. The idea of selling contracts against future income is interesting but putting the blockchain here is yet another solution in search of a problem.
It’s protocol-ized finance. Sure you can do it all old school, but that takes a ton of effort and makes your situation a unique snowflake. If you do it the way everyone has agreed on with tokens, all of your tokens plug into the existing infrastructure, is standardized, and makes the cost of capital go down. Why people continually can’t understand this, and keep saying “buh buh buh mysql and lawyer fees! No need for…
Many of the situations required in this article still require real-world contracts to make them work. The crypto tokens are additive on top of the contracts, but they don't replace contracts.
Someone could sell you an NFT that represents 15% of their future earnings over the next 3 years, but the blockchain can't enforce that. Even if we had all payments occurring on the blockchain, the person could simply create a new blockchain wallet and give their new address to future employers, claiming $0 earnings for their original blockchain address. The NFT itself is only valuable if supported by the weight of real contracts in the real world with real enforceability.
Crypto tokens only stand alone when the crypto token itself is being traded. Actual value still requires consensus that the token is worth something (Bitcoin, Ethereum) or a real-world contract that stipulates that whoever holds the token has a claim to some actual rights or asset.
It's likely that most of the real-world contracts for something of actual value have stipulations that the crypto tokens are null and void if determined to be lost or stolen. The crypto tokens are largely a distraction.
"Isn't this the same as traditional student debt or, worse, indentured servitude? Not really" Saying "not really" doesn't make something so. This is, literary indentured servitude. By definition.
It's become increasingly common to see the word "ponzi" applied to what is just really a "speculative investment".
Its a shame this is continually being done, because its a real destruction of language meaning. A "ponzi scheme" is an intentional act to defraud...using a portion of investor funds to pay other investors in hopes of attracting more and more investors. The conman then times his exit appropriately once some critical mass of investors rush in.
A risky or speculative investment is just that. There is no intent to defraud. The continual lazy use of "ponzi" does lots of harm since it unfairly implies 'an intentional act to defraud'.
I enjoyed the piece. Personally, I want no part of it, but I think it might work well for people who are not me. I've always been "on my own." My life really is a series of watersheds, where I've been the only person to believe in me, before the event, and a whole bunch of folks seemed to believe in me, after the fact. Not a particularly good setup for selling "Chris-Tokens™." Not a bad thing, in the long run. It hur…
"Isn't this the same as traditional student debt or, worse, indentured servitude? Not really" Saying "not really" doesn't make something so. This is, literary indentured servitude. By definition.
At least in the version that existed in early America indentured servitude allowed for coercion and there was no bankruptcy option. Whereas in modern law specific performance for personal service contracts are strictly forbidden and bankruptcy is out there.
I am curious whether it is easier for a startup looking to get into this space to do their ISAs via traditional contracts or Ethereum.
For ISAs, there isn't really any reason to put it on the blockchain unless the company is trying to sell it. Even then, the NFT on the blockchain would only be representative of the ownership, which still depends on the real-world contract. The contract would likely have provisions that the NFT is null and void if lost or stolen, as no reasonable company would voluntarily give up protections for their assets.
The future outlined by these new and exciting investment vehicles is horrifying.
It is essentially like a farmer selling futures contracts on their crop. The yield of the crop and market conditions at harvest time are so uncertain that trading upside for stability becomes a smart bet.
So one might think to themselves that they don’t feel certain about their ability to generate income for the next 20 years and sell a claim to their existing and future incomes for a payment today which they can diversify into other investments and tap in the future if things unravel for a period.
Of course the old fashioned way of doing this is putting part of your income into savings. But front loading savings has benefits like having a larger nut to start with and more time to compound.