解锁加密货币的全部潜力的骨架钥匙

本周，在华盛顿邮政专业的罗比尼首席执行​​官弗拉德·特内夫（Vlad Tenev）呼吁在美国采取新的资本市场方法。

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev recently called for a new approach to capital markets in the United States in a Washington Post op-ed. He proposed a number of policies, including modernizing accredited investor standards, a long-standing favorite among finance enthusiasts, but one stood out: “[T]here needs to exist a security token registration regime, allowing companies to create token offerings that are open to U.S. investors.” Here, Tenev identifies the skeleton key to unlocking cryptocurrency’s full potential.

Robinhood首席执行官Vlad Tenev最近呼吁在华盛顿邮政一家专栏文章中采用新的资本市场方法。他提出了许多政策，包括现代化认可的投资者标准，这是财务爱好者长期以来的最爱，但其中一位脱颖而出：“这里需要存在一个安全令牌注册制度，允许公司创建开放的代币产品给美国投资者。”在这里，Tenev确定了骨骼钥匙，以解锁加密货币的全部潜力。

Here's a breakdown of how securities markets operate in the United States. By default, companies are largely prohibited from selling equity at all. The Securities Act of 1933 defines securities and outlines the conditions—and penalties—for selling them. If a company wants to raise money, it hires a lawyer like me and either registers or finds an exemption like Regulation D (Reg D).

这是证券市场在美国运作的细分。默认情况下，完全禁止公司出售股权。 1933年的《证券法》定义了证券并概述了出售这些证券和罚款。如果公司想筹集资金，它将聘请像我这样的律师，并且要么注册或发现诸如D条例D（REG D）之类的豁免。

Most choose an exemption and go private. And as Tenev points out, many of those choose to stay that way—OpenAI, SpaceX or Stripe. But exempt securities do not trade easily. They’re generally encumbered by contractual and regulatory restrictions that make them illiquid. For the richest few companies, this might be fine—or even the point. But not for most. Without a secondary market, investors can only realize profit through dividends. And where investors cannot realize gains, primary markets run correspondingly dry.

大多数选择豁免并私下。正如Tenev指出的那样，其中许多选择保持这种方式 - Openai，SpaceX或Stripe。但是豁免证券并不容易交易。通常，它们受到使它们流动不足的合同和监管限制的影响。对于最富有的少数公司而言，这可能是可以的，甚至可以重点。但不是大多数人。没有二级市场，投资者只能通过股息实现利润。在投资者无法实现收益的地方，初级市场的运行相应干燥。

Registered securities, on the other hand, are highly liquid on the secondary market. This typically ensures that investors will jump to participate in an initial public offering. But this process is also restricted to the richest companies by its massive price tag. According to PwC, even relatively small initial public offerings cost millions of dollars, with millions more in annual legal fees and compliance. This is before considering the onerous transparency and forfeiture of control that come with registration. For these reasons now even top firms “avoid going public,” says Tenev.

另一方面，注册证券在二级市场上是高度流动性的。这通常可以确保投资者将跳入首次公开募股。但是，此过程也仅限于最富有的公司。普华永道的说法，即使是相对较小的首次公开产品，也耗资数百万美元，每年的法律费用和合规性增加了数百万美元。这是在考虑注册带来的繁重的透明度和没收控制权之前。 Tenev说，由于这些原因，即使是顶级公司也“避免公开公开”。

It’s no secret that this is a problem. Recently, Washington D.C. tried to address it by creating Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) in the 2012 JOBS Act. The idea was to make exempt securities more accessible to small and medium businesses (SMBs), but they just couldn’t help themselves. The program is hamstrung by the familiar restrictions on secondary liquidity. Combined with still-significant compliance costs, the result will never be a meaningful segment of U.S. capital markets.

这是一个问题，这不是什么秘密。最近，华盛顿特区试图通过在《 2012年乔布斯法案》中创建法规众筹（REG CF）来解决它。这样做的目的是使豁免证券更容易被中小型企业（SMB）获得，但他们只是无能为力。熟悉的二级流动性限制陷入了障碍。再加上仍然显着的合规成本，结果将永远不会成为美国资本市场的有意义部分。

Instead, the solution came from outside. In 2015, Ethereum developers introduced the ERC-20 standard, allowing anyone to create an arbitrary number of tokens and sell them into instant liquidity. Project founders could restrict resale as they chose. But in practice, the best projects quickly developed deep, efficient markets. These fungible tokens took various names and functions, but practically, for a time, they were the internet’s capital market.

相反，解决方案来自外部。 2015年，以太坊开发人员介绍了ERC-20标准，使任何人都可以创建任意数量的令牌并将其出售为即时流动性。项目创始人可以在选择时限制转售。但是实际上，最好的项目迅速发展了深厚，高效的市场。这些可及的代币采用了各种名称和功能，但实际上，它们是互联网的资本市场。

On top of secure, trustless blockchain technology, the crucial breakthrough was just letting people buy and sell tokens freely. It turns out this is a product people really want, and initial coin offerings grew 100X between Q1 and Q4 of 2017.

除了安全，无信任的区块链技术之外，至关重要的突破只是让人们自由买卖代币。事实证明，这是人们真正想要的产品，在2017年第一季度至第四季度之间，初始硬币产品的产品增长了100倍。

This halcyon moment couldn’t last—wholly unregulated markets were a sink for scams, and the subsequent SEC campaign to end cryptocurrency fundraising is well documented. These days, it is extremely difficult to make a legal primary token sale in the U.S. Projects are left to give tokens away for free. Even then, a single successful Hyperliquid airdrop created more value in a day than all Reg CF offerings from なんですが 2021 to 2023 combined.

这个太平时的时刻无法持续 - 骗局是一个不受管制的市场，而随后结束加密货币筹款活动的SEC运动已得到充分记录。如今，在美国项目中进行合法的主要代币销售是非常困难的。即使到那时，一个成功的超液体气盘在一天中创造的价值比所有なんですが2021年至2023年的所有Reg CF组合都多。

But rather than gesture to the past, Tenev emphasizes the future:

但是，泰内夫没有对过去的姿态，而是强调了未来：

“Tokenizing private-company stock would enable retail investors to invest in leading companies early in their life cycles…enabling them to draw additional capital by tapping into a global crypto retail market… [It] would [ ] provide an alternative path to the traditional IPO.”

“令牌化的私人公司股票将使零售投资者能够在生命周期的早期投资领先的公司……使他们能够通过利用全球加密零售市场来汲取额外的资金……[IT]将为传统IPO提供替代途径。”

He calls this “tokenized real-world assets.” I call it a regulatory third way. Sitting between exempt securities and public offerings, the SEC should promulgate rules that allow projects to sell securities in the form of cryptocurrency tokens with limited compliance and disclosures—combining the relative simplicity of a private placement with the secondary liquidity of a public offering.

他称这是“令牌化的现实世界资产”。我称其为监管第三种方式。 SEC坐在豁免证券和公共产品之间，应颁布规则，该规则允许项目以有限的合规性和披露形式以有限的合规性和披露形式出售证券，并将私人安置的相对简单性与公众发行的次要流动性相结合。

We already know the first-order effects of such a system. In 2017 and 2018 more than 2,000 projects sold tokens to raise over $13 billion. As Tenev points out, “the risks are highest where the opportunity for upside is greatest” and many of those early crypto companies failed. Many survived, though, and are still building today. Early investors grew rich, and their leaders remain faces of the industry.

我们已经知道这种系统的一阶效果。在2017年和2018年，有2,000多个项目卖出了代币，筹集了超过130亿美元。正如Tenev指出的那样，“风险是最大的上升机会的最高风险”，许多早期加密公司失败了。但是，许多人幸存下来，今天仍在建设。早期的投资者变得富有，他们的领导人仍然是该行业的面孔。

The second-order effects are where the real value

二阶效果是实际值