When I entered the blockchain field in early 2018, my focus was on the token economy. Together with Yuan Dao and Meng Yan, we have become the evangelists and spokespersons of the token economy, constantly promoting the implementation of the token economy. We also promoted the popular exchange "Token Economy Transformation Laboratory" project. Why are we sparing no effort to promote the token economy? Because we really feel that the token economy has the potential to transform the traditional financial paradigm, but the technical conditions and market environment are not yet that mature.

Tongzheng is the translation given by Meng Yan. The English word is Token, which originally means "token" and is translated as "pass", which is a digital proof of negotiable rights and interests. To put it more simply, a pass is a certificate and a value medium in the digital world. What rights the pass represents depends entirely on what rights the issuer of the pass grants it.

Then Token Economy can naturally be translated as "Token Economy" - that is, the value Internet economic paradigm in which assets are tokenized and efficiently transferred. Asset tokenization is to map assets into value expression symbols in the digital world and circulate them in the value network.

What is the value of asset tokenization?

Let us first understand a traditional financial term - asset securitization. There's a saying on Wall Street: If you have a stable cash flow, securitize it.

What are assets?

Assets are resources that can generate expected returns, such as the deposits in your bank savings account, goods being prepared for sale, and rent to be collected, all are assets.

What is asset securitization?

Asset securitization is to make assets "liquid", that is, relying on the future expected income of a certain asset to issue tradable securities for financing.

What is the significance of asset securitization?

Traditional financing methods are mostly based on equity and debt. Equity financing needs to dilute equity and control rights. Debt financing will increase corporate financial risks due to leverage ratio restrictions, and equity and debt financing methods need to be based on the issuer. The overall credit will cause greater operating pressure on the company.

Compared with stock financing, the advantage of asset securitization is that it does not dilute equity and has lower costs. Compared with debt financing, the advantage of asset securitization is that it does not occupy loan and bond issuance quotas, the use of raised funds is not restricted, and product issuance is less affected by market fluctuations. In addition, in asset securitization financing, due to the use of the "bankruptcy isolation" mechanism, the issuer can truly isolate the securitized assets from the overall credit risk of the originator.

For example, the 2016 Country Garden home purchase balance asset securitization project issued a total of 6.2 billion asset-backed securities to qualified investors based on the expected income from the home purchase balance receivables. For enterprises, asset securitization has greatly broadened their financing channels.

The token economy as I understand it is an advanced version of "asset securitization".

When assets are mapped into digital tokens, the flow trajectory of the assets can be traced throughout the entire process, and investors can efficiently trace the status of the assets to the origin; at the same time, digital assets can also be split infinitely, allowing more Multiple investors have participated; in addition, the "tokens" issued on the blockchain ledger are more credible, and through technologies such as smart contracts, the expected returns of assets can be more effectively guaranteed.

First, product monetization

The token economy can allow more assets to flow, including the right to use, blockchain systems such as Bitcoin and Ethereum The token issued on the platform represents the right to use this system.

What is the significance of the mobility of usage rights?

For physical goods, the right to use them (also called the right to take delivery) represents our right to dispose of the goods. As a medium of exchange, traditional currency actually trades commodities and the right to use them.

With the development of human society, traditional currencies have gradually evolved from physical currencies such as gold and silver into banknotes. Since banknotes are not limited by physical resources, the governments of many countries cannot grasp the economic laws and issue banknotes indiscriminately. Cases of inflation and economic collapse are not uncommon. The financial costs derived from the traditional currency and banking system will be borne by the working people of the entire society.

Satoshi Nakamoto developed a peer-to-peer electronic cash system like Bitcoin in the hope of solving the limitations of the traditional U.S. dollar currency. Unfortunately, Bitcoin has not completed its true historical mission, but Bitcoin has opened up our rethinking of traditional monetary mechanisms.

Since the reason for the existence of traditional currency is the transaction of the right to use goods, can we create a currency mechanism that allows the labor of workers and the productivity of producers to flow efficiently? Allow each individual and each enterprise to issue certificates based on their own credit, allowing credit and credit to be efficiently exchanged and circulated. Will it avoid the problems of traditional bond currencies?

Suppose I am a farmer, can I issue a farm commodity use right certificate based on the commodities that the farm is expected to provide in the future? Suppose you are a rancher, can you issue a ranch commodity use right certificate based on the commodities that the ranch is expected to provide in the future? Can usage rights tokens be exchanged between us? If a user holds a farm pass and a ranch pass, can the exchange be completed efficiently? What would it be like if each production company could issue a pass based on its own right to use goods, and each worker could also issue a pass based on its own labor force, and these passes could be exchanged efficiently? Will it bring about a new currency era?

Such a value exchange scenario is worth exploring.

Second, capitalization of labor

The capitalism criticized by Marx in "Das Kapital" is money capitalism, and those who pay ("capitalists") take away Surplus value, Marx thought was irrational. However, in the industrial age, building factories and purchasing equipment required a large amount of capital, and "capitalists" also bore the risk of investment failure. Monetary capitalism naturally has its rationality.

In the information age, more and more fields have become driven by the knowledge economy, more and more workers have become knowledge workers, and the importance of people has become more prominent than ever. The capitalist system urgently needs to be further upgraded, at least to human capitalism, and to fully value the value of workers. As the largest non-listed company in terms of market value, Huawei’s key to success is its emphasis on talent. Value Enterprises in the Internet era must pay full attention to talents and give talents sufficient space for "human capitalization".

According to Marx, value is undifferentiated human labor condensed in commodities and is a kind of abstract labor. Currency is the expression symbol of value. When value is expressed by currency, then those who hold the currency share the value-added benefits of the currency; while those workers who provide concrete labor do not share this part of the benefits. In other words, workers’ labor has not been effectively converted into capital.

An important connotation of the token economy is the capitalization of behavior, so that workers’ fragmented behaviors can be effectively recorded and tied to future earnings. We can understand this as labor capitalization , so that workers’ labor can be efficiently converted into capital, instead of losing access to capital after labor is monetized.

Third, account securitization

Blockchain technology enables trusted collaboration through public ledgers, and can incorporate all transaction behaviors, transaction entities, and transaction links into A public ledger is used for accounting. This means that as long as I have a settlement account on this public ledger, and this account has an expected cash flow, we can raise funds from appropriate investors based on the expected future income of this account, that is, realize the assets securitization.

Two years ago, someone proposed the idea of ??"talent IPO". Why didn't it work at that time? Regardless of whether this talent has growth potential, it is difficult to pass the financial audit alone. Because you have no way of knowing what money has been put in and out of this person's account, let alone what is reasonable and what is unreasonable.

If blockchain ledgers become popular, "talent IPOs" will become more feasible. All income and expenses of "talents" are recorded on this trusted blockchain ledger, and even future investment returns can be locked in advance based on smart contracts, and the corresponding returns will be automatically settled when corresponding conditions are triggered. If this model works, then there are too many assets that can be operated in this way, such as brand assets, store assets, expected revenue of single products, etc.

There is another very important point here. When the value Internet allows consumers, producers, investors and other roles to interact on a social network, a magical scene happens. Consumers The gathering of orders can not only solve the producer's financial problem, but also solve the producer's order problem, killing two birds with one stone. The total factor capital market based on the community is the capital market that truly represents the future.

Product monetization, labor capitalization, and account securitization all point to one thing - entity self-financing. The key to the token economy is to realize entity self-financing. The essence of the so-called "Internet of Value" is the self-financing of entities, allowing the economy to operate more efficiently and healthily.

How can such a future not make people excited?

Zhao Dawei: ***Xiang Xingxing amp; promoter of Xingdian Good Things. He once served as senior partner of Hejun Consulting (Asia's largest comprehensive management consulting company) and director of the Industrial Internet Research Center of Hejun Group. In 2018, the Blockchain Knowledge Academy and TokenX Community were established, and the Executive Secretary of the Token Economic Transformation Laboratory was established. Advocate of the theory of "community unity" and "industry unity", a researcher of Internet platform ecological strategy, and a researcher of new entity finance, he leads a team in Hejun Group to engage in consulting, training and investment banking business; he has experience in the industrial Internet. Accumulation of mature experience. Provide Internet-based strategic planning, organizational design, and marketing upgrade services to many customers. Representative customers include Haier, HNA, Pathfinder, Chao Acer, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Midea, Fosun, JD.com, etc.; on products, brands, channels, Retail, strategy, and capital are all studied in depth. He has authored the book "The Dugu Nine Swords of Internet Thinking" (400,000 copies sold), taught new Internet economy courses for EMBA courses at Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and participated in the 2015 Youmi.com "Win in China" Entrepreneurship Competition. Judges.

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