Astratum - The Rise of Tokens and Protocols

Astratum invited again to the Token Economy: an evening around ICOs, regulations - and drones acting together

Astratum's event series at the IKONIK Studio, a co-working space in Neukölln, is increasingly becoming the Berlin focal point for people interested in the Token Economy. The token economy is a term that describes the economic ecosystem around ICOs and token sales in line with the Digital Economy or the New Economy: In an Initial Coin Offerings or a Token Sales, a project sells tokens.

Through the token economy, companies can obtain financial support for interesting projects with relatively little effort. Conversely, through the token economy every interested person can invest early in those projects.

The tokens purchased in an ICO can usually be traded on different exchanges. However, the really interesting thing about the token economy is that these tokens provide additional features: they can help the owner to co-decide on the funds they have raised, they can be linked to important functions of the planned project or they can also be paid regularly to the token holder to lead. All of this can be implemented in the token.

Astratum - cryptocurrencies instead of Riester pensions

Astratum's Sven Läpple first outlined the development of the token economy by beating a long arc from the '68 movement, through the phreakers and cypherpunks, through open source and occupy, to bitcoin and ethereum. The ERC20 token was developed on the Ethereum Protocol, which, while not inventing ICOs, had a lasting impact on them.

In the token economy, Sven sees a disruption of the financial system in all the difficulties, worries and scams in the ICO ecosystem. That's what the New York Times said:

"Our grandparents had a pension fund, we have cryptocurrencies."

In addition to this classification of the token economy, Sven became more specific and introduced the different types of tokens: In addition to the classic cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin he calls a system like Ethereum a utility token, d. H. a token, which can be more than a payment system. Finally, tokenized securities are called, tokens that give investors shares in the project.

Companies and projects planning to finance through an ICO are encouraged to think about three issues:

• What is the function of the token?
• How does the token support the respective business model?
• What is the financial relationship between business model and token?

Conversely, investors should do their due diligence before participating in an ICO:

• Does the technology behind it make sense?
• What kind of developers are behind this?
• What can one say about the economy behind it? 
• How high is the premining?
• How is governance regulated in the project?

Sven concluded his presentation with some examples of interesting new projects within the token economy and thus led to the next lecture.

Aira - Drones who trade with each other

At the next presentation, Sergey Lonshakov shared our vision behind Aira: Aira aims to create a financial system for robots. This definitely reminds me of IOTA; Accordingly, it is intended to cover use cases for Smart Cities, IOT, Smart Factories and Industry 4.0.

In the lecture, a video was shown in which a drone is controlled by Ethereum. While this may not be the platform of choice at first glance, it does demonstrate the potential that can be realized through smart contracts. This approach opens up new opportunities in inter-machine communication and the programmable economy, where machines like drones can interact with each other. Smart Contracts can then be used, for example, to rent drones.

Later in the presentation, Sergey presented a truly daring vision to use smart cities and smart companies as sensors and actuators to fulfil the Paris Agreement. With the help of a global network of measuring points, emissions from factories and cities should be continuously adjusted so that mean global warming is controlled below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. Climate Engineering in the truest sense of the word.

For whom this vision is not yet futuristic enough: According to Sergey Lonshakov, these global control loops for optimizing the climate can also be used for Terraforming from Mars.

One likes to dismiss such ideas as fantasies, that is free for everyone. But, to put it in Lee Smolin's "The Trouble with Physics", we need the visionary, "crazy" seers, in addition to the down-to-earth Craftspeople, to move forward. In any case, the lecture was inspiring.

DWF - the legal implications of token sales

In a panel discussion, lawyers from DWF discussed the legal aspects of tokens and ICOs. DWF is an international companyde Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft. With representatives from Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain, this panel provided a good overview of the regulatory situation regarding ICOs and token sales in the various countries. It shows here that the British have the most relaxed attitude, while we Germans are, as always, the most meticulous in terms of regulation.Nina Seidler, who is also known for her work in the Federal Association Blockchain, has at the beginning of the different characteristics, which can have a token, and put the distinction between crypto currency, utility token and tokenized security on a legal basis: A cryptocurrency can be a medium, an investment or a clearing unit. Utility tokens may be licenses or coupons, while tokenized securities may be securities similar to equities. All these use cases have different legal implications; What a crypto-currency is, does not have to apply to a Tokenized Security. The authorities often use the duck criterion: what looks like a duck, sounds and moves is de jure a duck and must meet the same legal requirements as any duck. For those interested in ICOs, it was pointed out that the BaFin a document regarding the regulation of Token Securities works. It may even happen that there is a Global Mutual Statement on this subject from Oslo. The BaFin publication will require that the organizers of token sales adhere to certain requirements. In Germany, these are governed by the Investment Act and the Capital Investment Code. For many, the terms BaFin and regulation provide for gasp breathing. People are worried that the German administrative apparatus will once again stop innovation through prohibitions and regulations. While these concerns are understandable, BaFin's concern should not be ignored: the ICO market is a high-risk market in which people have not only burned their fingers but been financially ruined by scammers. On the other hand, regulation is also an implicit recognition; if a tokenized security is taken as seriously as a classic security, that is a positive signal for the token economy. I had still asked the question, whether the coming regulations would also count for Airdrops. Although many people at Airdrops like to think only of "free money", it must not be forgotten that the organizers of the Airdrops are rarely philanthropists or Caritas. Throwing worthless tokens, if listed somewhere, can help a project overpay unless they give away 100% of their tokens. Since there is a high risk of blistering, I had suspected that the BaFin and other authorities have already taken care of the matter. Apparently, this is not the case. Since the stated intention is not enriching, according to representatives of DWF it may even be that there is generally no regulation in Air Drops. Unfortunately some tasks were waiting for me the next day, which is why I no longer have the lectures of FOAM and REIDARO Overall, however, I enjoyed the evening very much, which is why I would like to recommend to everyone who lives in Berlin the events of Astratum. If you would like to get an impression of this event and want to see some lectures, you can do so in the 360 ° Do video.