Dematerialization (DEMAT)

Categories: Tech, Trading

The 2017 Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black comedy, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle had a $90 million budget and grossed over $900 million at the box office. The premise of the movie is that a video game mystically digitizes four teenagers into avatars within the game.

We're dealing with a different type of dematerialization here.

The advent of computers and electronic settlement of trades via DTC has overwhelmingly encouraged dematerialization of physical certificates of stocks, bonds, or other securities into demat electronic accounts held in street name at different brokerage firms or clearing firms. The reduction in paperwork, manpower, and record-keeping convenience of electronic trading, settlement, and account management also allows the IRS to monitor these accounts in like manner to credit and debit card accounts v. the use of paper currency.

Something to bear in mind. Or car in mind. Or talking tree in mind. Whatever avatar floats your boat.

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