By putting people on the blockchain, and essentially making them trade-able, one comes face to face with the thought, “is this a stock market for people?”

While blockchain startups race to tokenize everything from oil reserves to money, the glaringly obvious hasn’t been attempted: Tokenizing People. Tokenaire Ltd, a tech and blockchain startup located in the heart of London, has announced that it will be the world’s first to tokenize people on a large scale. Find out more at: https://www.tokenaire.club/

Elon and Mark “Popularity” Chart

We might have become comfortable with the idea of putting a valuation on assets, or companies. But is putting a valuation on an individual going too far into our dystopian nightmares?

If you jumped straight to these conclusions, we would like to invite you to another point of view. To start, let’s return to the familiar concept of a stock market. But instead of looking at the companies themselves, let’s go to the shareholders.

What are Shareholders?

Shareholders have voting rights to be able influence the direction of a company. And in a way, shareholders, or people wanting to become shareholders “compete” in a supply and demand sense to create the market for stocks.

It is this “competition”, or vying for stake or control, which makes the concept of a stock market for people interesting.

Contrary to the obvious, Tokenaire is less about putting a valuation on people, and more about giving people who want a stake a means of identifying themselves, and a means of measuring how much they value that stake — or how much they would be willing to pay for it.

A musician could sells records, and an author could sell books, but it’s unlikely that a follower would ever buy more than one copy. How do fans differentiate amongst themselves? And surely they would attach some utility to having the ability to signals to others — not least to the artist or author — the level of their appreciation.

Find your biggest Stakeholders

Another extension to the analogy is that of dividends. Before going too far, let’s reject right away the idea of personalized tokens bearing any “ownership” qualities over an individual, as it would over company profits. But what then do I mean by dividends? Dividends in the sense of discretionary distributions. I refer to the idea of being able to extend benefits proportionally among stakeholder to the most important ones. Practically speaking, a musician or author could invite their biggest stakeholders to a concert, a meet and greet, or perhaps involve them in the decision making about a future album or book. These are merely a handful of examples — “dividends” could take so many forms it is really only limited by the extent of our imaginations.

Conclusion

In exploring the idea of tokenizing people, and confronting the ugliness of a stock market for people, the core of its mechanics in fact reveal it to be a much more hopeful idea. It’s isn’t a stock market for people, it’s a marketplace for admiration and shared values. As embodied by those we admire.