Article:
http://www.thedrum.com/profile/news/280305/tzero-and-polymath-team-up-bring-wall-street-blockchain"The blockchain industry is courting Wall Street.
Soon, the tokenization of all things made possible by the distributed computing platform Ethereum will not just be available to ICO startups, but to blue chip companies as well.
Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne seems to believe as much. Byrne has been a long-time proponent of blockchain technology and has accepted Bitcoin payments for his company’s business since 2014.
Byrne’s new project is tZERO. A subsidiary of Overstock.com, it is an SEC-regulated alternative trading system (ATS) that intends to create a decentralized version of NASDAQ, which was the first electronic exchange where investors could buy and sell stock.
tZERO security tokens will be made available to accredited investors in a public sale this month. The SEC compliant distributed ledger platform for capital markets aims to raise $250 million in a token sale of its own.
tZERO reportedly attracted more than $100 million in commitments from cryptocurrency and traditional institutional investors within the first 12 hours of its launch.
In order to facilitate this sale, tZERO will be working closely with Polymath, which is designing the industry’s first open-source security token platform. The company, founded in 2017 in Toronto, is launching its own standard for securities tokens. Called “ST-20”, the standard is similar to Ethereum’s ERC-20 tokens, but with financial securities regulations baked into the tokens themselves.
“Polymath will be providing ongoing consultation and has already advised tZERO on the design, economic model and distribution of its security token, which will be a preferred equity token,” CEO Trevor Kovervko commented. “tZERO is disrupting Wall Street as we know it. Polymath is helping to create the thriving security token industry to make this possible.”
The announcement comes at a time when regulators, such as the SEC, have stated that tokens issued in ICOs could be classified as securities.
The vast majority of ICOs today are made up of utility tokens, and only a small fraction are described by issuers as securities.
After the SEC delivered its guidance, the general feeling in the token industry is that companies will increasingly decide to issue equity in the form of a token. Instead of an IPO, companies will launch the sort of asset-backed token sale for which Polymath is advising tZERO and creating the ST-20 token standard.
“Trillion of dollars in securities are migrating to the blockchain,” says Kovervko. “This includes assets of all types, such as equities, bonds, venture capital, real estate and global currencies. In Polymath, we’re pioneering a new decentralized infrastructure suited for the modern financial world. tZERO is right there with us on the cutting edge of this new capital market powered by securities tokens.”"
This is
HUGE news guys. Thoughts??
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