Quote from: alyssa85 on February 08, 2018, 11:40:25 PM

Quote from: MkGregor on February 08, 2018, 10:32:32 PM

https://upvotesclub.com/the-ethereumization-of-wall-street-is-inevitable-expe-news/

I read this article, thought, I'll share. It sounhds good, but I don't think it will happen that easy, Wall Street perfectly understands the dangers it is facing in the face of cryptocurrency markets.So they will lobby for heavy regulations and even if that happens, it will be on their terms. As a matter of fact, I think that once the cryptos will be "properly regulated" you will have to get "qualified investor" status in order to trade them.
Why?
Because the government needs to protect you!

It's a good article and pretty accurate. Ether is more of a danger to Wall Street than Bitcoin.

Most of wall street doesn't do payment processing (that's done by two monopolies, VISA and Mastercard). Wall street raises money for new ventures via Initial Public Offerings, which net Wall Street huge fees.

But why bother with an IPO, when you can do a cheap and cheerful ICO on the Ethereum network and raise the same amount of money, without the Wall Street fees?

Because IPO's raise 10x or 100x more money? And IPOs are for shares which give you equity - ownership - in business? Unless the structure of ICO changes pretty fundamentally they are not going to be of serious interest to Wall Street.

What is the main function of investment banks? Its putting the deal together, securing the funding from other banks and investors to pool together the bulk of the issue, along with underwriting. This would still be needed in a system that run on Ethereum or other smart contract. Smart contracts can automate issuance and increase access to funds for low capitalisation projects, but they wont replace those old networks of investors and lawyers.

And to the OP point, the regulations already exist! That's why US (and some other) citizens are excluded from just about every ICO, as they are from many IPOs. People have tried and succeeded to launch their dodgy fund raising before, some have failed, some have scammed, and rules and regulations exist. Cryptocurrency isn't doing anything new, only changes how some things are done.