Token issuance

New units of a digital asset created by the protocol itself and distributed under its own rules.

Example

Uniform issuance of 8.00% takes a holder from 1,000 of 100,000 units to 1,080 of 108,000 - 1.000% of supply in both cases.

Important

Issuance paid to everybody proportionally is a change of units, not a return. Any measure of progress denominated in units of the asset itself can be manufactured by creating more of them.

Related terms

• Staking yield — A rate paid to holders who commit a digital asset to some function the protocol needs, quoted in the visual language of interest.
• Dilution — The reduction in your percentage ownership of a company when it issues new shares to someone else.
• Circulating supply — The units of a digital asset currently in holders' hands, as distinct from the total number that will eventually exist.
• Digital asset — An entry on a shared ledger, transferable by whoever holds the private key controlling it. Unlike every other instrument in this curriculum it is not a claim on an issuer, a company or a borrower.

Lessons that explain it

• No coupon, no rent, no earnings: the next buyer is the return — There is no income here by default and no cash flow to discount. Where a protocol does pay a yield, the useful question is not how much - it is where the money comes from, and sometimes the honest answer is other holders. (11 min)
• Seven questions about one specific asset — What it does, who can issue more of it, who already holds it, how deep the book is, whether the rules can be changed, where you would keep it, and what would tell you that you were wrong. (14 min)

All 578 terms in the Investing glossary