What’s the difference between ETH, FTT, USDC, TRUMP and $APPL? And how do those differ from airline miles or a CryptoPunk? Why does it even matter?

Today, @eddy, @skominers, and I published two articles classifying tokens based on their source of value. 👇

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I would redo the tree like this. Whether a token has intrinsic value or not and whether it is speculative or not is kindof in the eye of the beholder.

Trying to solve more problems than I cause @a16zcrypto

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I didn’t include company backed tokens because it seemed even from your article that they were kindof grey zone and maybe not a real category. The way you described them seems more like meme coins or arcade tokens where the issuer implies they are security like without then actually being security tokens.

For lp tokens, I think of the protocol as the issuer. You are giving funds to a protocol and the protocol is issuing a claim token to you to allow you to recover the funds you deposited. The protocol is in essence borrowing your funds in exchange for a fee. That this is all programatic vs issued by a person/company I dont think changes much about what the token is.

Interesting. I’m don’t think all asset backed tokens are a claim on an issuer though. For instance, LP tokens have no issuer. 

And it looks like company backed tokens have fallen out?