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> the only reason to buy GOOG or AMZN is the hope that you can sell that stock down the line to a "greater fool". No, that's not correct. When you buy a share

> the only reason to buy GOOG or AMZN is the hope that you can sell that stock down the line to a "greater fool". No, that's not correct. When you buy a share of a publicly traded company (or a private one, for that matter), you are literally buying a fraction of their cash on hand, a fraction of their business operations, a fraction of their trademarks, a fraction of their inventory, and so on. You own part of the company. The difference with cryptocurrency is that people ditched the entire ownership of anything and replaced it with just a token. It's like if you took a company, hollowed out every single thing that made it valuable, and sold the shares as novelty stock. Anyone suggesting that stocks are just fun tokens that people trade back and forth doesn't understand what stock actually means. I think this misconception is very popular in the cryptocurrency world because it justifies the existence of tokens and crypto coins that aren't actually backed by anything of value. If you're convinced that nothing matters and it's all just tokens anyway, you're more likely to be persuaded to invest in crypto tokens and shun the stock market.

waprin 5y ago
No, you’re in fact the one whose incorrect. Buying a share of GOOG in no way gives you rights to their trademarks or other IP. In fact you don’t even get voting rights, unlike traditional stock. GOOG is the one that’s been “hollowed out “. Likewise, owning a share of GOOG in no way gives you access to their cash. There is one and only one thing you can do with a share of GOOG - hope to sell it to someone else for more money. On the flip side, owning ETH gives you a stake which actually does give you governance rights, either via your own validator or a staking pool. And it gives you access to many other ways to participate in the network such as DeFi.

waprin 5y ago

No, you’re in fact the one whose incorrect. Buying a share of GOOG in no way gives you rights to their trademarks or other IP. In fact you don’t even get voting rights, unlike traditional stock. GOOG is the one that’s been “hollowed out “. Likewise, owning a share of GOOG in no way gives you access to their cash. There is one and only one thing you can do with a share of GOOG - hope to sell it to someone else for more money. On the flip side, owning ETH gives you a stake which actually does give you governance rights, either via your own validator or a staking pool. And it gives you access to many other ways to participate in the network such as DeFi.