The wider world · 87 / 90 · 3 min
A share, a coin, a deposit
Deposit, share, coin. Three queues. The ticker does not pick one.
The ticker does not choose the queue. The document and the keys do.
A worked case
A token uses the word equity. Buyers hear shareholder. There is no share register behind the token, and the keys to the treasury sit with the company. When withdrawals stop, the token holders are not standing where the shareholders stand.
Three claims
A deposit is the bank's debt to you. A share is a claim on a company, and the vote follows the size of the holding. A coin is a line on a network. A website using the word does not turn one into another.
A brokerage product is a fourth door. You hold the account. The firm holds the coins. That is the wrappers course. The word on the ticker still does not do the legal work.
The queue
Share, equity, stock, deposit. The words are cheap. The claim is the document, and whoever holds the keys.
When the firm stops paying, people find out which queue they joined. Shareholders, depositors, and token holders are not handed the same piece of paper.
FTT was not a share in FTX
FTX was an exchange. FTT was a token the exchange issued and talked about as if it were bound up with the firm's success. Customers also left balances on the exchange. Those are three different things sitting in one story: a firm, a token, and a customer balance. A share in a company is a fourth thing, with a register and a place in an insolvency. FTT was not that share. The balance was not notes in a box. The token's price was the last trade.
In November 2022 FTX halted withdrawals. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged the founder the next month, describing a fraud on customers. Bankruptcy followed. Token holders, customers, and lenders did not walk into the same room with the same piece of paper. People who had heard equity when the firm said the token were holding the costume. The keys to the customers' coins had been at the firm.
A coin can be a record you move yourself. A deposit can be a claim on a bank, with a guarantee written in law up to a limit. A share can be a claim on a company. A token that borrows those words is still a token until a document you can read creates the other claim. If you cannot name the document, you do not hold the thing the word suggested.
Read it yourself
These links are the record. They are not a recommendation, and they are not instructions. A news story or a court paper can still be wrong about a detail. The check does not change because a famous name is in the story.
Apply the check
Open a question. The line is about this topic. It is not a verdict that anything is safe.
Whoever the real claim pays: the bank, the company, or nobody if you only hold a story.
Whoever wrote the document. A token's admin, if one can still change it.
The firm that can refuse the withdrawal. A chain cannot turn a token into a share.
Check yourself
Write it in your own words. The course's answer opens after that. Nothing is sent.
After this you can say which claim you hold, in one sentence, with no slogan.