What Is the Token Economy?

Blockchain-based protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum have made sending digital values in the form of tokens as cheap and easy as sending an email. But while cryptographic tokens (sometimes called "cryptocurrencies") may be as important to the next-generation internet as the World Wide Web was to Web 1.0, people aren’t yet sure how to best design tokens or even what to do with them.

In this report, Shermin Voshmgir, director of the Research Institute for Crypto Economics at the Vienna University of Economics, walks you through the different types of tokens, along with their properties and both operational and conceptual use cases. You’ll get a concise overview of the current state of tokenization in our economy and explore the potential effects and dynamics of a future "token economy."

You’ll learn:

• What a token is
• A framework for determining the properties of a token
• Common use cases for different token types
• The relationship between tokens and money (including the functions of money that most current tokens don’t fulfill)
• Where the token economy is headed