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  • Hacker News
  • The tokenization being talked about is minting digital tokens in a public blockchain to represent traditional assets.

    Unlike decentralized cryptocurrencies, this blockchain is not decentralized and participating requires creating a wallet and having it whitelisted by a centralized controlling entity.

    Some form of identification, KYC/AML process has always been required to be an investor or non-trivial financial transactions.

    The benefits of tokenization over the traditional approach are fractional ownership, faster settlements and transfers, 24/7 market, etc.

    by 29athrowaway
  • the contrarian optimist case against this dystopia of CBDCs and digital identity is that institutions themselves are too corrupt to adopt them. i met some people involved in a project to turn a government budget into a ledger and the resistance was that it would remove all the discretion from the system, and even technocrats forget that the discretion is its own reward in those places.

    their entire plan is predicated on there being no alternative, and these world domination plans make some noise but they do not prevail.

    by motohagiography
  • I wonder what BLACKROCK'S Social Credit Score would be???
    by bzmrgonz
  • Every single time, huh guys.
    by naIak
  • Based
    by Drupon
  • You first, Larry. Any functional social credit would have him at "untouchable" levels.
    by viccis
  • Like forcing ESG wasn’t creepy enough. Social media is already too much herd mentality.
    by slowhadoken
  • I co-founded a holiday real estate-backed crypto project in 2019. We only raised $50k though. Just enough to buy 1 unit in South Africa. We started using profits to do on-chain token buybacks with proof of burn. We proved the concept but scale was too small with just one apartment. It was a really cool concept though. Too bad the powers-that-be didn't select us.

    The main problem with blockchain projects is that they're not decentralized in the way that counts. You still have to be chosen by the powers-that-be. There's still only one path to success; just like the rest of the tech sector.

    by socketcluster
  • Is there an online presence for the project or traces ?
    by dekervin
  • Which powers at be do you mean? I’m not following.
    by 7thpower
  • Cronyism is inevitable at scale, the UK's digital ID scheme is an obvious recent example.
    by jpfromlondon
  • Dude who became powerful by the simplest business model in existence (buying S&P winners with other people's money, selling losers), suddenly gets to set the policy for the rest of the world. Index funds should never be allowed to vote in corporations they own as their business model is just a simple rental of success.
    by storus
  • You're barking up the wrong tree with this because index funds typically vote according to whatever the proxy advisory firm's recommendations are.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_firm

    by gruez
  • All you need to read is the manipulative marketing buzzword jargon littered throughout articles like this to realize they do not have your best interests in mind.
    by tcdent
  • That's how democracy was bypassed. Whoever you vote for, they'll do what Fink says, not what voters choose.

    In the UK, it's the duty of MI5 to ensure such corruption of state doesn't happen. See how well they protect British public:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/1gx4qoa/keir_star...

    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-digital-id-scheme-to-...

    Security services should start doing their job and restore our democracies.

    by varispeed
  • What I find funny about this is that cryptocurrency - a supposed way to create a currency independent of bank or government control - laid the foundation for this. Look at all the terminology Larry Fink is throwing around here: tokens, ledger, fractional ownership.

    Good stuff, thanks guys!

    by AlexandrB
  • Read the Great Taking book, it's a bit kooky in some places but a good read nonetheless.
    by kogasa240p
  • Cryptocurrency did not lay the foundation for a ledger. That's been around for over 500 years. And fractional ownership was well understood before computers, but viewed as not worth the effort.
    by IncreasePosts
  • Use cash. Get cash out at the ATM, keep it in your wallet. Spend it at local businesses. Even if you can’t do it all the time do it as much as you can. Start today and stick with it.

    Otherwise this is what we’ll be stuck with everywhere all the time. There won’t be a choice anymore if you don’t exercise that right. We’re already far down this slippery slope.

    by cattown
  • Some countries almost completely cashless now. No escape from big brother
    by hoppp
  • How does clutching to colored pieces of paper solve any problem? IMO, it only reinforces the pathology which is the cause of many of our problems.
    by jongjong
  • A reason to use cash is that transaction fees (like CC fees), over time, tend to eat up all the original money being transacted.

    On the other hand, cash is a germ superhighway.

    by 29athrowaway
  • I completely agree with you, but you cannot stop this train. Cash will continue to exist only as a loophole to be exercised by rich and connected individuals. Everyone else will be robbed by police for having "suspicious amounts of cash."
    by obviouslynotme
  • > Spend it at local businesses.

    The ones that still take it, anyway.

    by stronglikedan
  • And advocating for mass individual consistent behavioral change is less than useless. If you want change you need political organization. The sum of public opinion is more influenceable than the sum of everyone's actions. Unfortunately, in the US it's not so simple as "vote for the party that's against this" as we only have two and neither are. Which means if you want to be effective you should throw your lot in with an advocacy group. In this case probably the EFF, maybe the ACLU?
    by idle_zealot