I am horrified by what was/is allowed legally at wall street. Not that ICO's are any better.
For a longest time, Wall Street had three tricks: securitization (breaking cash flows into securities), portfolios (putting securities in a box) and leverage (borrowing and lending). (One could argue swaps are a fourth.) That's it! IPOs? Securitise a company. CDO? Portfolio mortgage securities. Mortgages? Securitise them!
Now there are blockchains. A whole new thing! If there's a group thrilled shitless about blockchains and ICOs, it's Wall Street. Best part: when the whole thing goes south, they get to blame Silicon Valley.
Pardon me, I was being facetious. We agree. I was responding to a comment claiming investment banks "are clearly threatened by the ICO boom" [1]. Wall Street is more likely to coöpt, as opposed to be replaced by, blockchains.
HFT is mostly ultra-fast arbitrage programs, and the benefit of using them far outweighs the downsides.
Maybe the problem is not with HFT but in the industry as a whole
TLDR; Wall Street is part of an industrial/political system that extols "free market" capitalism, publicly, when in fact, "free markets" and "free market meritocracy" is a myth, and they know it. Privately, these same people hire lobbyists and otherwise influence the political system to craft regulation & policy around property, monopoly, contracts, bankruptcy, and enforcement. These regulations protect and enhance the benefit of the few.