<story><title>The Ponzi Career</title><url>https://www.drorpoleg.com/the-ponzi-career/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mattzito</author><text>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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tjs8rj</author><text>I’m usually in total agreement about blockchain just being stuffed anywhere, but observationally, there must be a good reason why blockchain shows up in these situations so often. There’s definitely the hype factor, but blockchain does have value in that it’s reasonably trusted by average people (perhaps unlike signing a contract everytime you wanted to purchase a piece of a creator - coins gamify it), and it’s easy to setup trust systems - Alex setup his own token in a weekend for a “human IPO”, rather than running through the cost and time of properly setting it up with a lawyer and contracts.&lt;p&gt;Maybe blockchain’s biggest value proposition right now is that it’s lightly regulated and has hype, so using it greases the wheels when growing an audience or building a usually regulated product.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Ponzi Career</title><url>https://www.drorpoleg.com/the-ponzi-career/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mattzito</author><text>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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>seibelj</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;Why people continually can’t understand this, and keep saying “buh buh buh mysql and lawyer fees! No need for blockchain!” is a failure of imagination.</text></comment>