system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What would Hans Gruber have been able to to with all those bearer bonds?

Surely he wouldn't have been able to do anything, right? I'm not entirely sure how they work. What are they, like, currency or something?
gpt
Bearer bonds aren't really issued anymore because of their strong link to criminals and money laundering, but yes, he could use them.

They are unregistered, whomever is holding the piece of paper at that time, is the owner.

Sure he probably couldn't walk into the Nakatomi HQ and turn them back in for cash, but he could use proxies to cash them, or sell them to third parties.

Edit: To explain bearer bonds, think of your school lunch as currency. Your friend wants some of your lunch, so he can fund his lunch exchange business. So you invest your lunch in him, and in return he issues you a bond, or a legal promise to pay back your lunch loan within a specific period of time with a specific interest rate.

This is how many governments and companies raise money for projects. Sure, because the time and interest are set by the borrower and not the lender, you don't make a lot of money fast, but its considered some of the safest, as the returns are guaranteed by law. 

Bearer bonds are a type of bond. There is no registry of them. When you buy one, you are issued the bond itself, a piece of paper, but no record is kept of who bought it. So when the time period expires and its time to cash it in, whomever shows up with it gets the money. This lack of ownership history made them great for criminals, and criminals only. So now no one issues them at all.

Still, existing bearer bonds have to legally be paid out, unless they can directly prove fraud. But that's hard, old Hans Gruber could easily sell the bonds to a third party and no one could prove that they were stolen bonds.