Ep. 270 Introducing infineo Marrying Whole Life with Blockchain Technology
Bob officially describes his new role as Chief Economist with infineo. He first explains the mechanics of Whole Life insurance policies and their use as cash management vehicles. Then Bob summarizes the first infineo whitepaper, which explains the $SOUND token, a security token that represents a fractional claim on the aggregate cash value of a pool of Whole Life policies.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- The infineo website.
- Bob’s podcast with Cole Snell, FOUNDERS FORUM.
- Link to view infineo whitepaper 1.
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
The audio production for this episode was provided by Podsworth Media.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
Why would you need a bLoCkcHaiN/tOkEn for this, instead of a plain old database?
Presumably because a plain old database requires trust in a centralized authority, and a blockchain database does not. Hopefully infineo is open sourcing their tech and doing things the right way, and not just creating yet another ScamCoin.
(1) I’m pretty sure this idea requires a central real guy making the final decisions (who decides who’s eligible?), not to mention all the government controls. Adding a tOkEn on top of this mess is ridiculous and pretty clearly a scam? (2) Only bitcoin’s bLoCkcHaIn database is decentralized, for a plethora of different reasons.
@ Dennis – How is this a mess?
I read the white paper and it seems legit.
My understanding is that Infineo is securitizing assets in nearly the same way that Wall Street banks were securitizing high-risk sub prime mortgages back in the early to mid 2000s. But in Infineo’s case, the assets being pooled together (primarily whole life insurance policies) are low-risk and designed to increase in value.
The Infineo token is backed by real assets. It represents a claim to a portion of the income stream generated by that low-risk pool.
Why is this “ridiculous and pretty clearly a scam”?
I already answered your question, in the form of rhetorical questions. It sounds like there’s a central guy making all the key decisions – so all this talk of tokens and blockchains is just smokescreen and very misleading. The only interesting thing about “blockchains” was their decentralization – not needing that central guy.
1. Not necessarily. You can implement the decisions as votes on a smart contract.
2. That’s obviously false. Bitcoin isn’t even the *most* decentralized. ASIC miners are a very large potential source of centralization as you could wind up in a situation where governments license who can build or own them.
It is the most decentralized. The evolution to ASIC is inevitable for any proof-of-work system. You also kinda contradict yourself – you only mention potential concerns, yet express certainty that those concerns will /obviously/ manifest – even though to date the exact opposite has been happening – bitcoin mining and asic-making is more decentralized than ever before. Both China and the US have tried to shut bitcoin down, numerous times, and failed for many interesting reasons.
Denis,
The fact that you think ASICs are inevitable under PoW means you haven’t actually delved into it very deeply. No specific hardware can gain an advantage at solving RandomX. Governments will never be able to restrict generic computing parts. They can *easily* restrict ASIC manufacture.
Furthermore, that was only 1 example. Bitcoin also steadfastly refuses to expand the block size to actually handle the amount of transactions necessary for modern commerce. This has led to several proposed solutions – ALL of which introduce major points of failure and thus increase centralization.
Any algorithm can be implemented in an ASIC, and will be if there’s an incentive. What are you talking about?
Bitcoin(ers) does(do) not “steadfastly refuse” to expand the block size – you’re dishonestly misrepresenting the situation. They did it at that time because they were optimizing for decentralization, not coffee buying. And it seems like they made the right decision – it’s easy and relatively cheap to get onto the PERMANENT ETERNAL chain, the number of nodes is high (it’d be lower if the hardware requirements had been increased, which that proposal would have done), and miners are being rewarded – that transition has to happen sooner or later.