Imagine if Apple called in all of their stock shares and credited them, 1:1 with their own coin. Let's call it the iCoin. Really, it could be any company, but Apple gives us a clever pun for the ICO, and other things we'll get to later.
This is (was?) actually a real crypto-coin: Applecoin.
The iCoin would have a lot of advantages, both for the consumer, and for Apple. Trading the iCoin would be a lot easier than trading the stock; it would likely be both faster and cheaper. If Steem's speed and fees were our model, it would be substantially cheaper and faster than any online stock exchange or old-school broker. You'd also eliminate a layer of counterparty risk - you're no longer exposed to broker or exchange failure.
Another advantage is that the coin could be given real value. It could be redeemable through the Apple for any product at the current market exchange rate. This would "close the loop" on one of the things I like least about stocks - your lack of real claim to any underlying asset. As a regular shareholder, you are so far down the list of claims for assets that in any bankruptcy or liquidation event you can expect to get nothing. Ultimately, that makes your stock nothing more than a "proxy" for value, it has no intrinsic value.
I told you this was a real thing.
A coin that could be spent for Apple products has value, especially given how closely and carefully Apple guards their products and their MSRP. Their internal store remains the premier location for sourcing their products. Credit there has wide usage and acceptance. Further, Apple might see a measurable uptick in demand. Marketing studies regularly show that the easier you make it for people to spend money, the more of it they spend. If you could convert a few shares of stock immediately into a new iMac, some people. Considering how much the large corporations have been borrowing low-interest money to buy back stock, why not take the stock buyback directly to the people and cut out the middleman?
On the securities front, this would have both pros and cons. Anyone who has moved a substantial amount of both money around the banking system, and cryptocurrency arund the crypto exchanges, knows that it's cheaper, easier, faster, and less frustrating overall to move crypto than it is to wire funds. However, it can also be less hand-holding for new users, and a single typo can cause you to lose your funds in a literally irreversible fashion. Obviously, regulation would be a problem as well.
Apple, or another tech company, is the perfect trend-setter to try an experiment like this. They are able to push new ideas and interfaces onto their customers, who often accept anything they do on something that almost appears to be religious faith. They have the ubiquity to do something new and force people to learn their new rules, and the bankroll to play the long-term game.
This is the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Sources: Softpedia, CoinMarketCap, Google, USA Today