Re: e$: Geodesic Securities Markets

[rah@shipwright.com (Robert Hettinga)]

>That is largely the case for institutional transactions. Lots of
>equities are still physically delivered, and in fact all equities are
>still physically deliverable.                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^

Except those equities designated "Book entry only" issues, of course ;-).

>> That makes sense. Once a certificate is put into the vault at
>> DTC, it usually never leaves.  It might as well not be there at all.
>
>However, it is still there, and the vaults on Long Island are heavily
>guarded in spite of the fact that the certificates are non
>transferable.

I'm just wondering why not make them e$ certificates someday...

>
>> Oddly enough, an e$ certification scheme reverses that paradigm. The book
>> entries disapear, the certificates proliferate, and the clearinghouse
>> becomes a referee, "blessing" the trade.
>
>Its not really practical to do this with things that aren't bearer
>instruments.

Ain't it a bitch...:-)

>You need to know the beneficial owner of virtually all
>securities issued in the U.S., and even if we had a completely free
>market we would still likely not have bearer certificates for most
>corporate stocks, since such certificates are hard to track and one
>wants to be able to find stockholders for corporate governance
>reasons -- when stockholder meetings are called for example.

I'm *really* *not* making this up as I go along, but... If a clearinghouse
is "blessing" the trade they could still perform their function(??) of
notifying the corporation / issuer of a change in it's ownership.  The
"pointers" to the security just get swapped around... Uncle Sam still gets
to know who owns what.

However, it's possible under this scheme to have anonymous ownership, too.
If it were legal, of course...

While this thread is starting to look more like crypto-enabled and less
like actual crypto, I'm still thrashing this stuff around on my own.  My
crew figures there's some business in here somewhere.  If anyone wants to
yak about it with me off-line, let me know.... *I'm* having fun...


Cheers,

Bob

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Robert Hettinga  (rah@shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone
Shipwright Development Corporation     who eats too little and sees Heaven and
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Boston, MA 02331 USA                       snakes." -- Bertrand Russell
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