At worst, a fraction of the value of all the companies physical assets and IP, which is significant. At best, fractional control over huge amounts of revenue that the company earns.
A share isn’t just some token, it conveys ownership of a public company.
No, not at all like the stock market. Shares of stock grant you partial ownership of a corporation with assets and income. Tokens give you partial ownership of fuck-all.
it entitles you to sell that legal fractional ownership to someone else.
If your fraction is high enough, you could have full legal control. But since it's very dispersed, there would be a discount on the value of that legal ownership.
But the fact that you still own it is worth something, and that is exactly what the share price is indicating.
A share is a part of the company. You are, essentially, becoming an investor. This is why companies like Google are forced to go public: They have too many employees and investors who own parts of the company, and the SEC's threshold says: "After 500 people own a portion of your company you have to go public; being private is too much of a risk to the shareholders."
So whether you get preferred (which is usually issued shortly after the investment or founding) or common, you're unlikely to see that piece of the company be worth anything until the company sells, goes public or issues dividends. In the case of a preferred shareholder, you can also get some liquidity in the event of bankruptcy or shutting the company down.
To put it simply, when you are given options, you can exercise them by purchasing them at a very low valuation. Until those shares are worth something, you can not sell them.
They mean that you own a specific fraction of the company (at least until the stock gets diluted). If the company is worth $X, and you own Y% of it, then your stock is worth $XY/100.
Forget about technical definitions for a second, and consider a practical view from a businessperson.
A share of stock in a publicly traded company is a legally recognized right to the earnings/assets of the company. Of course, the company may choose to distribute the earnings, or reinvest them for greater future earnings/assets.
However, all ICOs I've seen so far bestow no legal right to $$ denominated earnings/assets of any sort.
So an ICO to purchase a cashflowing asset (e.g. an apartment building) gives the owner of the token ZERO legal right to claim any of the cash from the rent collected or proceeds from a sale of the apartment building. However, the owners of stock in the corporation that purchased the building definitely have legal rights to the cashflow/proceeds from sale etc, even if their purchase was facilitated by the sale of virtual tokens. They have no legal obligation to pay the token holders anything whatsoever.
This is an over-simplified example to drive the point home.
Of course, and it's also not _just_ a share, which is the comment I was responding to. 49% of a company's outstanding public shares is a significant portion. It's 2% away from controlling, and a fun merger event.
No, what gives a share value is that someone else is willing to buy it from you for a certain price. The fact that it represents fractional ownership is why someone is willing to pay a certain price to buy it from you. But fundamentally, the value only exists as long as there is a counterparty.
You're guaranteed to receive some stock. As for the value, that depends on the company performance. But yeah being public stock you know how.much is worth and you can actually sell it
At least when you buy a share you literally own part of the company. If you were to sell all of it, including all the possessions of the company, you would still get a share.
Because a company has a value.
I'm still struggling to define what's the value of BTC
GOOG shares have value because the company has value. They represent a fraction of that value but not an equivalent fraction of management control. Class B shares will eventually all be class A, Eric has converted a tremendous number of his already (they convert when you sell them, its possible they convert on change of ownership which would change them when they were inherited). So fractional ownership represents the fraction of what someone might have to pay to have full ownership.
This is not the same thing. Shares of a company have an actual value: a part of the company's capital (computers, building, etc). At least there is some ground based on real-world something. Of course the company can go bankrupt and owe more money than its capital can cover, but that's still not the same has crypto assets, whose values are purely speculative.
A share isn’t just some token, it conveys ownership of a public company.
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