How does this manage to connect the real world to a blockchain? The fundamental problem with the promises of insurance/bonds/stocks/whatever on a blockchain is that it doesn't matter what the blockchain says, people's real-world actions aren't tied to it, so it's not trustless. And so the blockchain part is pointless.
Only if all the related elements are all virtual and on the blockchain can it do anything - so we're stuck with gambling and cryptokitties for real world usage.
Another related issue is that tokens are bearer instruments controlled by whoever holds the right private keys.
Most investments regulated in the US cannot legally be bearer instruments. This means there must be a ledger listing who owns what with real names attached. For public companies they must use a registered transfer agent to keep these ownership records. Private companies can keep their own records, but in most cases cannot use bearer instruments. What happens if I transfer you the token if there is a master ownership ledger with names and addresses? Nothing happens. The token record becomes out of sync with reality is the only thing that happens.
Isn't onchain here a transfer agent? Bearer is more appliable to cash, because it's physical. A token movement is still recorded onchain, i.e. there is a set of transfer agents and consensus among them. It can be tuned to support some regulation.
An account is controlled by a key AND the validators who choose to record their transaction. One cannot just share the key with others. First, they need to record it with ledger keepers. How is it not like transfer agent?
Yes, the transfer agent can ask for a key signing before moving funds, but they also need to be able to transfer WITHOUT the key. Examples would be a key loss or transfer of ownership due to court order. I don't know what the key is doing since it's optional and highly fallible proof of transfer intent.
At best the key signing is providing a partial audit trail with no case law to support any liability transfer created by its use. Typically transfer agents take very little liability by requiring a medallion signature before allowing a transfer.
In a custom blockchain it can be configured to have admin method to transfer without a signature. But the question is why.. Why assets cannot be bearer?
well they don’t have to be... tokens are just code running on the blockchain, so you can apply anything you like to them... you can block a transfer until the recipient is in a whitelisted KYC list so that real world identities are known, and then you have your ledger
worried that loses the “trustless” of blockchain? hash the KYC entry and store it on chain so you make certain that the off-chain real world ownership information hasn’t been tampered with
Sounds like you're referring to security tokens, which place a securitized asset's cap table on a public blockchain. 0x works with all tokenized assets, so we're not opinionated about which assets people want to trade -- other companies like Harbor (https://harbor.com/) offer tokenization services. You're right that placing bearer instruments on a public blockchain presents some issues and the jury is still out a bit.
An alternative might be found in protocols like UMA (https://umaproject.org/), Augur (https://www.augur.net/) or MakerDAO (https://makerdao.com/) which allow you create synthetic tokens that trustlessly track the price of a real-world asset by creating financial incentives to rebalance the price of the minted tokens. MakerDAO has already been used to create over $80MM in a synthetic USD token called Dai (https://makerdao.com/dai/) and UMA has created a synthetic S&P500 token, allowing anyone anywhere around the world to get exposure to US Stocks (https://medium.com/uma-project/announcing-us-stock-index-tok...).
Only if all the related elements are all virtual and on the blockchain can it do anything - so we're stuck with gambling and cryptokitties for real world usage.