本文翻译自：
What the Heck Are Tokenised Securities?
https://hackernoon.com/what-the-heck-are-tokenised-securities-7cd1123cbdad
作者：Micheal Kogan
发文时间：2018.5.26
翻译时间：2018.6.20
译者：谭景桐

转载需完整注明以上内容

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（我搞不懂什么是通证化证券T_T）

There are a lot of claims going around in the crypto community that tokenized securities are about to revolutionize traditional finance. In light of such optimistic sentiment, it is worth drilling into exactly what the hoopla is all about.

最近，币圈（译者注：这里大部分指的是美国币圈）有很多言论声称通证化证券（Tokenized Security）将颠覆传统金融系统。顺着这种乐观的情绪，我们有必要来深究一下这一片叫好的氛围背后到底是怎么一回事。

What is Security? 什么是证券？

A security is a concept that is both legal and economic. From economic point of view, a security is essentially a claim on future cash flows of the issuing entity that can be exchanged for value and involves a degree of risk that the claim will not be repaid or fulfilled.

证券是法律和经济领域的概念。从经济学角度来看，证券本质上是对发行实体的未来现金流量的经济权益凭证，但它涉及一定程度的风险，即将来不一定会被兑现或履行。

From legal point of view, public sale of securities is highly regulated. An Initial Public Offering is an issuance of equity securities to the general public and involves a pretty complicated and expensive regulatory process. There are also private securities offerings that do not have as high of a regulatory burden, but are limited in the classes of investors that are allowed to participate. There are various regulations governing securities issuance, explained in more detail here.

从法律角度看，证券的公开出售受到高度管制。首次公开募股（IPO）是向公众发行股票证券，它涉及相当复杂和昂贵的监管程序。还有一些私人证券产品的监管成本不高，但只有少数的投资者可以参与。关于证券发行有各种各样的规定，点这里查阅详细解释。(译者注：这里指美国的证券法规。）

What does the above have to do with tokens and blockchains? nothing. And everything. Regulations are agnostic as to which kind of technology is involved, a Postgres Database, Ethereum blockchain or something else. They apply regardless of the underlying technology. One can argue that new, better laws are needed and sometimes they are, but that is beyond the scope of this article. We want to deal with the world as we find it, not as we would like it to be.

以上内容和通证、区块链有什么关系？可以说没有关系，但也可以说全部有关。监管法规会影响哪一种技术，是Postgres数据库，还是以太坊区块链或其他内容，都是不可知的。无论底层技术是什么样的，监管都照样会实行。有人可能会争论说，我们需要更新更完善的法规，有时候的确有这样的法规出台，但这不是本文想讨论的范围。 我们希望在当下的世界里解决问题，而不是寄希望于想象的世界中。

What is Token? 什么是通证？

A cryptographic token is a smart contract designed to securely store and transfer information (value) using private key encryption, that either serves as reward to maintainers of decentralized ledger, or requires rewards to be paid in the form of native protocol fuel(gas).

加密通证是一种智能合约，用于通过私钥加密手段安全地存储和传输信息（价值），它既可以作为分布式账本的运维者的报酬，也可以以本地协议手续费（gas）的形式索取报酬。

What Does it Mean to Tokenize Securities? 通证化的证券意味着什么？

In the simplest form, accounting and transfer of a security can be implemented using a token, on either a public or private ( permissioned ) blockchain. Let’s for the moment suspend disbelief, which is required in case of almost all innovation, and try to figure out the advantages of doing this.
Specifically, let’s run through some of the claims in this article:

（通证化证券）最简单的应用形式是，在公链或私链上使用通证来对证券进行记账和转让。我们暂且先不怀疑它的可行性——我知道怀疑精神是几乎所有创新都需要的素质——我们先试着理解这样做的优势何在。

下面我们通过摘录一篇文章中列举的一些优点来具体地分析一下：

（译者注：以下各个小标题是作者引用的文章中列举的优点，标题下的段落是作者对于该优点的质疑。）

24/7 Markets 24小时/7天的市场

24/7 hour trading has absolutely nothing to do with tokens and blockchains. The reasons US stock market does not trade 24/7 have nothing to do with technological inability to do so with current systems. It has to do with tradition, convention and convenience. Yes, convenience. Opening and Closing Auctions concentrate liquidity and allow for convenient and efficient price discovery, when combined with continuous trading through the day. Note that Forex markets are already 24/7 without any help from tokens. Also note that being forced to trade all asset classes on weekends would complicate many aspects of running a professional trading business, not something that trading desks around the world are looking forward to.

（译者注：作者引用的原文指出通证化的证券能实现24小时7天全天候交易，从而增加证券市场的效率，流通性和交易速度。）

24/7小时交易与通证和区块链完全无关。美国股市没有实行24/7的交易并不是因为在现今系统中缺乏技术能力。之所以没这么做是因为传统，惯例和便利性。没错，便利性。 开盘和收盘的动作集中了流动性，并在一整天的持续交易中使市场定价变得方便和有效。 值得一提的是，外汇市场已经是24/7全天候运作了，且无需通证的介入。 另外，强行在周末交易所有类别的资产将会使得专业交易业务在许多方面变得复杂，这可不是世界各地的交易柜台希望看到的局面。

Fractional Ownership 分式产权

Obviously, fractional ownership is already available today. Accredited Investors can use sites like RealCrowdto buy into shares of a single building in Manhattan and public markets investors can purchase REITs which offer a variety of exposures to real estate. There are over 200 publicly traded REITs and a total of about 1,000 if we include the non-traded ones. Certainly, there aren’t any publicly traded securities that would allow one to go long one building in Manhattan, while shorting another.

（译者注：原文指出通证化证券能增加分式产权的交易活动，从而使市场定价更有效率，并减少交易成本。）

显然，分式产权现在已经出台可用了。经认证的投资者可以使用像RealCrowd这样的网站购买曼哈顿某栋楼房的资产份额，而公开市场的投资者可以购买涵盖各种房地产风险的房地产投资信托基金（REITs）。目前已有超过200个公开交易的房地产投资信托基金，如果算上非贸易性房地产投资信托基金，其总数可达1,000个左右。当然，没有任何公开交易的证券可以让人们长期做多在曼哈顿的一座房产，而同时做空另一座。

This is not a technology problem, though. It has nothing to do with tokens. It has to do with regulatory complexity of issuing securities and obtaining them from the issuer for the purpose of shorting and the inabiilty to hedge such short positions. None of these issues would disappear just because there is a token involved. In theory, nothing is stopping a futures exchange, such as CME or ICE, from creating a separate futures contract, one for each building in Manhattan. They have created products such as FANG futures and weather futures. The point is, betting on weird idiosyncratic things does not in any way require a token.

但这不是一个技术问题。它与通证无关。它与发行证券的监管复杂性有关，与从为了做空的发行人那里获得发行证券有关，以及与无法对冲这些空头头寸有关。这些问题都不会因为通证的介入而消失。理论上，没有人会阻止像CME或ICE这样的期货交易所为曼哈顿的每座建筑单独建立一个期货合约。他们已经创造了诸如FANG期货和天气期货等产品。我想说的是，给千奇百怪的标的物下注完全不需要使用通证。

Rapid Settlement 快速结账

“Trades for bitcoin or ether settle in minutes, not days”. Well, since most of the crypto volume takes place on centralized exchanges, technically, trades for bitcoin or ether do not settle until a request to withdraw is made, which means they sometimes do not settle for months or not at all, if the exchange database gets somehow corrupted or hacked. But fair, if we are transacting on chain, we will settle right away.

（译者注：原文指出证券交易的结算通常要花好几天时间，而区块链技术和智能合约可以使交易的结算自动完成。）

“比特币和以太坊的交易在几分钟内就能结算，而不用花好几天时间。” ——好吧。。。因为大部分加密货币的交易量都发生在中心化交易所里，所以理论上，比特币和以太坊的交易在提币之前都没有完成结算，加上交易所的数据库有时会受到损坏或入侵，这意味着大量的交易可能有几个月甚至永远都没有结算过。但话说回来，如果我们直接在链上交易，结账会立即完成。

The reason for multi day settlement period of securities transactions, though, is not the technical inability to make a quick transfer. It’s because the sellers of securities are given time to come up with securities to deliver and the buyers are given time to come up with the cash for those securities. You can sell securities you do not currently have and you can buy them with the money you do not have, as long as you cough it up at settlement time of T+2.

然而，证券交易需要多日才完成结算的原因并不是技术上无法实现快速转账，而是因为证券的卖方需要时间拿出证券来交付，而买方需要时间拿出买这些证券的现金。你可以出售目前还没出台的证券，你也可以在没有钱的时候买下这些证券，只要你在T + 2的结算时间凑出来就行。

That is not completely a bug, but can be a useful feature. Nothing prohibits the parties from exchanging securities and money immediately, the regulation is about setting the upper, maximum limit on how long this process is allowed to take. More importantly, since these settlement times are mandated by regulation, they would apply to tokenized securities in exactly the same manner as regular securities. Most counterparties would choose to wait to deliver, as its clearly better to send money later than sooner.

这不完全是一个缺陷，它反而可以是一个有用的功能。这项规定并非禁止各方即时交换证券和资金，而是设定完成这个过程所允许的时间上限。更重要的是，由于这些结算时间是由监管强制执行的，所以普通证券受到的约束完全适用于通证化证券。大多数交易方会选择等待证券交割再付款，因为迟付显然比早付更好。

Liquidity and Market Depth 流通性与市场深度

“Security tokens could mitigate market segmentation, making it easier for buyers in one country to access assets in another country”. NOOO! selling securities across borders involves a cross-border securities issuance process, something that already exists and is quite complex due to regulations. The same regulations that would apply to security tokens, because, you know, they are securities.

“证券通证可以缓解市场划分，使一个国家的买家更容易购得另一个国家的资产。” ——不不不不可能！跨境出售证券将涉及跨境证券发行程序，这个程序已经存在，并且由于法规的限制这个流程相当复杂。适用于普通证券的规定同样适用于通证化证券，因为它们都是证券。

What about tokenizing shares in a private equity or a venture fund? An investor in a venture fund is a limited partner. A partner, albeit with limited rights. But a partner nonetheless. The general partner has a business relationship with limited partners and has no interest or incentive in allowing them to freely trade their interests, any more than a partner in a private business has an incentive to let her partners easily trade in and out of their shares.

把私募股权或风险基金的份额通证化会如何？风险投资基金的投资者是有限合伙人。尽管权利有限，但毕竟是一个合作人。普通合伙人与有限合伙人有业务关系，但普通合伙人没有意愿或动机让他们自由地交易自己的收益，而私人企业的合伙人有动机让她的其他合伙人轻松买进卖出自己的股份。

There is also the problem of huge adverse selection. If someone is selling their private fund interest, it is probably because they have realized this is not a great fund. Since the security is private, there is a material amount of non public information that the limited partner is in possession of. Therefore, anyone buying such interests will be subject to enormous adverse selection. This is the reason why there aren’t very liquid markets for such interests, once again, tokenizing the interest does not in any way address this problem.

这里还有一个问题，就是巨大的逆向选择。如果有人出售他们的私人基金权益，那可能是因为他们已经发现这不是一个好的基金。由于证券是私有的，有限合伙人会手握大量的非公开信息。因此，任何购买此类权益的人都将蒙受巨大的逆向选择。这就是为什么这种权益没有市场流动性，再强调一次，将这种权益通证化完全无法解决这个问题。

Interoperability 互操作性

“The thesis underpinning the idea that everything will be tokenized is grounded in the aspiration that everything will be interoperable… I want to hold ownership claims to a commercial building, early stage equity, corporate bonds, a T-bill, my house, and a decentralized network on the same platform.”

“对于未来所有东西都会变得可互相操作的愿望，是所有东西都会被通证化这一论点成立的基础… 我想在同一个平台上对一栋商业建筑，一份早期股权，公司债券，国库券，我的房产和一个去中心化网络拥有所有权。”

Dude, you can do that already. Open a Robinhood account, buy shares of SPY, VNQ, TLT, HYG and some BTC, ETH. Ain’t got nothing to do with tokenized securities, you feel me?

哥们儿，你已经可以这么做了啊。 开一个Robinhood账户，买一些SPY，VNQ，TLT，HYG的份额和BTC，ETH，就行了。这跟通证化证券没半毛钱关系，懂？

Do Tokenized Securities Make Sense? 通证化证券靠谱吗？

Yes, as long as we think creatively about what cryptographic tokens allow us to do and, instead of trying to reinvent things that are already quite functional without tokens, try to enable new paradigms where blockchains and decentralized systems can be used.

靠谱，但需要我们创造性地思考加密通证能让我们去做什么——不是白费力气去重新发明那些不用通证就已经非常够用的东西——而是去尝试用区块链和去中心化手段来激活新的范式。

Let’s imagine a security for example, that represents a collection of fine wines of a particular type and/or vintage. Currently, it is possible to invest in wine funds, so such securities exist. Suppose, we create a smart contract, which adheres to ERC-721 NFT Protocol. Suppose further that we encode information into the token that represents a hash of the specific bottles, or cases, or vintages owned by the fund and that hash matches information both on the crate, the bottle itself, equipment at the wineries, etc. In this way, we have created a security where the smart contract encodes information about what is actually being securitized.

举个例子，让我们假想有这么一种证券，它代表一个特定类型和（或）年份的优质葡萄酒的集合。目前投资葡萄酒基金是可行的，因此这样的证券肯定存在。假设，我们创建了一个符合ERC-721 NFT协议的智能合约，进一步假设，我们将信息编码到了一个通证上，这个通证代表着基金里的特定酒瓶或酒盒或年份的哈希值，并且这个哈希值与货箱，酒瓶，酿酒厂设备上面信息相匹配。这样一来我们就创造了一个将真实的证券化信息嵌入智能合约里的证券。

One could certainly accomplish the same thing with centralized databases, but in this case, nobody has to maintain the information once its encoded, and it is as secure as the underlying protocol. Something like it may or may not be useful, but the key is tokenization in this example refers not to repackaging of the same old sh.. stuff that’s currently working fine, but to creation of something new, enabled by decentralized protocols.

人们当然可以用中心化数据库完成同样的事情，但在这个例子中，一旦信息编码完成就不再需要人去维护，并且它与底层协议一样安全。像这样的东西可能有用也可能没有用，但关键在于这个例子中的通证化不是去重新包装那些目前没有毛病的旧玩意儿，而是利用去中心化协议来创造新的东西。

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译者短评： 最近美国币圈对通证化证券大肆热捧，称其为下一个大浪潮，许多新的区块链交易所也围绕着证券市场展开争夺。但这篇文章就人们通常指出的通证化证券的优点进行了深入分析，我们可以看到，通证化和去中心化在技术上都是容易实现的，而开辟新道路的障碍很多时候并不是技术，而是法规，社会接受度和其他因素。去中心化的重点不在于取代已经运行顺畅的事物，而在于利用技术去创造新的工作方式。

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