Vitalik on risks of political coins

The risk of politician coins comes from the fact that they are such a perfect bribery vehicle. If a politician issues a coin, you do not even need to send *them* any coins to give them money. Instead, you just buy and hold the coin, and this increases the value of their holdings passively. Furthermore, there is deniability: holding the coin is, in terms of financial effect, a linear combination of donating to the issuer and gambling. Hence you can have the intention of doing the former but when challenged claim that you are doing the latter. You can even hold the coin privately, and show that you are holding it to whoever you need to show; you do not need any zero knowledge proofs, you just send a test transaction. This is all risky to democracy, for reasons very similar to what I wrote in https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2021/08… , https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2020/09… and elsewhere. TLDR: the economic arguments for why markets are so great for "regular" goods and services do not extend to "markets for political influence". I recommend politicians do not go down this path.