please dont do this on our blockchain. the last thing i want is the feds breathing down my neck. the code is open source go fork it and make SilkRoadCoin.
but in answer to your question, technically, yes, a blockchain could be used to solve these problems. not asset exchange though. thats not what asset exchange is for. its for trading homogeneous resources not heterogeneous resources. "weed" for example is heterogeneous so weed colored tokens wouldn't work well in the asset exchange. what you want to do is outline a protocol for interpreting arbitrary messages in a way that is relevant to running a marketplace not an asset exchange.
I think you are wrong here, Anon.
Suppose I'm a weed dealer called Mr. Green. Suppose I get 10 oz. of product in from my supplier. I can issue an asset called "1 oz Mr. Green's Dank Bud" and issue 10 shares of the asset.
Dealers develop reputations for quality of their product, so 1 oz. from Mr Green may be worth less than 1 oz from Mr. Purple, but as far as a buyer is concerned...an ounce from Mr. Green is fungible with any other ounce from Mr. Green.
And not for nothing, but Bitcoin would probably never have gotten out of Mom's basement if it weren't for the appearance of the Silk Road early on in Bitcoin's history.
You're probably right that there are more elegant ways to run such a marketplace, but to say it couldn't be done in the AE is being shortsighted, IMO.
I could be wrong.
if they could keep there quality consistent enough than it could work. the thing is that there probably wouldnt be a huge advantage for mr green of allowing people to trade greens dank tokens amongst themselves rather than just selling to them directly. though there could potentially be the advantage of giving him some really solid price signals to help in the running of his business. i may in fact have been wrong about this. it may infact be good for mr green if he produces a steady supply of reliable constant quality, not so good for some guy who gets meth or something from different sources all of the time with varying quality. good for producers themselves who can guarantee a constant quality and constant supply, bad for resellers who just resell what ever they can get their hands on.