Wallstreet has a monopoly on IPOs, they are clearly threatened by the ICO boom. Its just the internet all over again. Candlemakers wanted to ban light bulbs. Newspaper wanted to regulate online media. They all failed. So will wallstreet. Its just a matter of time, the forcing function is way to strong.

> Wallstreet has a monopoly on IPOs, they are clearly threatened by the ICO boom

For a longest time, Wall Street had three tricks: securitization (breaking cash flows into securities), portfolios (putting securities in a box) and leverage (borrowing and lending). (One could argue swaps are a fourth.) That's it! IPOs? Securitise a company. CDO? Portfolio mortgage securities. Mortgages? Securitise them!

Now there are blockchains. A whole new thing! If there's a group thrilled shitless about blockchains and ICOs, it's Wall Street. Best part: when the whole thing goes south, they get to blame Silicon Valley.

Even if blockchains/cryptocurrencies replace fiat currencies and ICOs replace IPOs on a stock exchange, little about Wall Street does will actually change. Securitizing and aggregating securities into portfolios, lending, marketing and pricing securities, advising issuing entities, etc., the things investment bankers occupy themselves with every day, do not go away because of cryptocurrencies and ICOs.

> the things investment bankers occupy themselves with every day, do not go away because of cryptocurrencies and ICOs

Pardon me, I was being facetious. We agree. I was responding to a comment claiming investment banks "are clearly threatened by the ICO boom" [1]. Wall Street is more likely to coöpt, as opposed to be replaced by, blockchains.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15790978

Your parody is very good!

What is "wallstreet"?

> "Wall Street is an eight-block-long street running roughly northwest to southeast from Broadway to South Street, at the East River, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry (even if financial firms are not physically located there), or New York-based financial interests."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street

I know what Wall Street is

What is allowed that horrifies you?

Robert Reich's "Saving Capitalism" documentary on Netflix does a pretty good job to answer this question.

TLDR; Wall Street is part of an industrial/political system that extols "free market" capitalism, publicly, when in fact, "free markets" and "free market meritocracy" is a myth, and they know it. Privately, these same people hire lobbyists and otherwise influence the political system to craft regulation & policy around property, monopoly, contracts, bankruptcy, and enforcement. These regulations protect and enhance the benefit of the few.

I wouldn't say that's totally wrong... but does it follow that, therefore, there should be no regulation whatsoever? That has negative consequences too.

One that bothers me the most is automated high frequency trading. They can cause the entire market to crash because of one mistake.

automated high frequency trading also does the important work of eliminating the question "Which exchange should I buy AAPL at?"

HFT is mostly ultra-fast arbitrage programs, and the benefit of using them far outweighs the downsides.

Maybe the problem is not with HFT but in the industry as a whole

A human trader can also cause the entire market to crash because of one mistake. See Waddell trading 75k e-minis or PVM trading 7 million barrels of brent while drunk.