Simple question and maybe this has been addressed someplace else, but from what I've been reading Ethereum will eventually allow anything to serve as a tradeble currency or "token" within the Ethereum ecosystem. So what is the purpose of the Ethereum currency itself (Eth)?
Say for example I'm a company and I want to issue shares. I want to do it simply with a friction-less system (i.e. instant with minimal fees) that allows me to issue or transfer shares easily, and publicly verify ownership. Based on Ethereum I can simply create shares from nothing and issue them within Ethereum. All the share holders have to do is prove they own an address which contains shares that I've created. Those shares would not exist outside of Ethereum but who cares? The point is just to have a publicly verifiable ledger that shows who owns what in my company. In this scenario I would have no need whatsoever for Eth, but I'm still using Ethereum. How would that work?
Edit - I've been thinking about it and the only thing I can think of is that Eth is what will be used to pay fees to support the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Using my previous example say there are a bunch of companies issuing shares. They have each created a token that is unique for their company. But now somebody wants to transfer some shares, which would require a small fee. Well what do you pay the fee in? tokens? Whose token? I think by providing an underlying base level currency (Eth) the developers will be able to get around this. Which would mean all fees are paid in Eth, but whats actually being transferred could be anything. Am I on the right track here?
Yup. Eth is the "fuel" to keep the network running. To do operations and pay miners. You can make your own tokens to work within this system, but it all needs to be "fueled" by eth.
PS! Before you expose anything of value to ethereum, even when it's fully up and running, you need to check if it's legally recognized by the relevant authorities. You can't normally just issue shares willy nilly (I understand it probably was just an example, but I thought I'd mention it).
I think Ethereum is exactly the sort of of platform that will allow things like that to happen "willy nilly" (using your term cuz I liked it)
There is no central authority that controls the creation of tokens, currency, digital soap bars, whatever you want right? So I would imagine all sorts of "illegal" things will be taking place on Ethereum. By that I mean people may attempt to circumvent laws, not actually selling illegal items.
