Tokenise the World, But Privately

U.S. Banking Watchdog Makes Case for Tokenization, Just Not on Public Blockchains

OCC chief Michael Hsu – a crypto critic – argued asset tokenization is the future, but he said centralized efforts are the way ahead.

Though U.S. banking regulators including the OCC have warned the institutions they regulate that involvement in crypto needs exacting scrutiny, a number of financial firms – including Wall Street banks – have experimented with managing their own blockchain projects. Hsu said such “centrally operated, trusted blockchains have the potential to deliver security and achieve scale efficiently.” He added that tokenization “does not require decentralization and trustlessness.”

Official release: Acting Comptroller Discusses Tokenization, Artificial Intelligence

Public blockchains, which support the vast majority of cryptocurrencies circulating today, appear to suffer from a key design flaw: “trustlessness.” The goal of having a “trustless” or “trust-minimized” blockchain requires a decentralized consensus mechanism, such as proof of work or proof of stake. These mechanisms are inefficient and create a trilemma between decentralization, security, and scale — achieving all three simultaneously is not possible with a public blockchain. To grow and manage the trilemma requires either ponzi-prone “tokenomics,” highly technical workarounds, or both. As a result, the crypto industry remains largely self-referential and disconnected from the real world. Moreover, the non-permissioned nature of public blockchains makes them attractive to criminals and others engaged in illicit finance, and full compliance with anti-money laundering rules is extremely difficult for crypto intermediaries to achieve.

He quotes Vitalik far too much; do these people read nothing else? However, he is right, and it's up to crypto devs to prove him wrong. No bank or fintech corp is going to risk having their own blockchain hijacked by a cartel that isn't already under their control. Why do devs think that's such a great idea?

Worth reading the Project Hamilton report and whitepaper.

Hsu also discussed AI, but bizarrely avoided anything to do with trading bots. Read it, if you wish, but is largely boring, following his mantra of, "build the brakes while building the engine". Because, of course, banksters are such trustworthy individuals, and regulators are there to protect us.