Overstock goes for largest ICO ever at $500 million

[StockBet.com]

Overstock.com goes for largest digital coin offering ever at $500 million
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/25/overstock-com-goes-for-largest-digital-coin-offer-ever-at-500-million.html

Overstock Reveals Plans for Equity Token Exchange and ICO
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/overstock-reveals-plans-equity-token-exchange-and-ico/

Right now, however, no SEC approved exchange exists that can handle equity tokens, so Overstock is creating one.

If this happens, it opens up many things that StockBet can add to its platform and gamify more of the $70 Trillion stocks asset class!

According to the article:

tZero will incorporate profit sharing features of a security as well as utility features of an app token. For instance, token holders will be able to use the tokens to pay for exchange fees. They will also receive a percentage of tZero’s profits, distributed quarterly and paid into their tZero digital wallets.

An analogy is like this:

Nasdaq is a stock exchange.  It is also a publicly traded company, which means you can buy and own shares of Nasdaq.  Nasdaq had $3.7 Billion in revenue last year, has a market cap of $12.07 Billion and pays 2.1% dividends.

tZero (which is Overstock) wants to create a new stock exchange, to compete against Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange, except tokens will represent ownership of stocks.

With tZero, you can buy their tokens, which gives you equity in tZero and receive dividends.  You can also use their tokens to pay for exchange fees, which you cannot do with Nasdaq shares.

Overstock is a good indicator of the size of the stock market.  Here is a comparison to cryptos:

Cryptos:              $0.2 trillion
Gold:                   $7.8 trllion
Stocks:               $70 trillion
Fixed Income:    $199 trillion
Derivatives:       $630 trillion

See the chart for this at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2152880

These are the asset classes that we want to gamify.

Everyone in the crypto community is salivating for Bitcoin to have the same market cap as Gold.  Gold is chump change compared to the other asset classes in the stock market.

It’s commonly known that the stock market is the world’s largest casino.  According to Boston University Law Review, trading stocks is identical to gambling.  Investing is a myth, as the average holding period is 4 months.  Wall Street professionals don't try to hide it.  They say that they are betting and use the word "bet" all the time.  Options and derivatives are bets.  According to The Economist and CNBC, the Chinese see little difference between stocks and casinos.  Consequently, the amount of gambling activity in stocks is unsurpassed.  Vegas and Macao are peons.

Think of Nasdaq and NYSE as the house.  The exchange fee is the house cut.  But they’re not the only “house”.  All of the brokerage firms, such as TD, Fidelity, eTrade, etc., are all houses as well.

NYSE is much bigger than Nasdaq and NYSE is smaller than Euronext, which they merged with.

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[StockBet.com]

Overstock Shares Surge 30% After $500 Million ICO Announcement
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/overstock-shares-surge-30-after-500-million-ico-announcement/

The stock has gone parabolic…up 200% in past 12 months.

We’ve opened a round on Overstock.  Make your bet:

https://stockbet.com/#/BullBear/round/17972

[Filmmmakerr]

With this overstock will be going down in history. This is incredible, lets see how it follows through now.

[housebtc]

The news is a market changer for the cryptos, now I can see alot of coins been pumped to over $500 million for them to be listed on overstock, step by step it is going mainstream

[Crypington]

Funny, I've never even heard of the overstock.com ICO, but it starts in about 2 weeks and they want to raise half a billion...  

Seems weird that a company that has operated successfully without BlockChain tech now wants to change things up and cash in on an ICO.... Almost seems like a cash grab before the SEC steps up its regulation.

[CodyAlfaridzi]

This is both interesting and worrying. A company as big as overstock jumps in on an ICO, placing their feet further into cryptocurrency realms, sure great! I think they could easily surpass that target of $500 Million in no time, considering that projects like Tezos, Filecoin, that is nothing compared to a company like Overstock, could also raise millions of dollars easily.

But currently, ICO is both controversial and illegal in some countries, including U.S. and China. Will they allow U.S. citizen to invest in their ICO? How will they comply with the law? I hate to say this, but it seems that they're just trying to gain profit from the ICO bubble.

[lofegs]

This is both interesting and worrying. A company as big as overstock jumps in on an ICO, placing their feet further into cryptocurrency realms, sure great! I think they could easily surpass that target of $500 Million in no time, considering that projects like Tezos, Filecoin, that is nothing compared to a company like Overstock, could also raise millions of dollars easily.

But currently, ICO is both controversial and illegal in some countries, including U.S. and China. Will they allow U.S. citizen to invest in their ICO? How will they comply with the law? I hate to say this, but it seems that they're just trying to gain profit from the ICO bubble.

As I remember Filecoin just allowed registered investors. They could the same if I'm not wrong

[HongKong]

With this overstock will be going down in history. This is incredible, lets see how it follows through now.

Overstock will go in history though I have a feeling that it won't be all that in the cryptocurrency field.
Many coins have large amounts of money in their marketcap and their intial investment though they aren't doing too well weeks after their launch.

[Zeeks]

When I see a company or project that tries to raise this kind of money.
I know they are out of touch with crypto, or just money hungry wolves who ask for way too much money for what they can deliver.

[Iwuzhaxxed]

Overstock just sells stuff online. So what do they need an ICO for? Does anyone have the details? Links?

[StockBet.com]

Overstock just sells stuff online. So what do they need an ICO for? Does anyone have the details? Links?

They want to create a new stock exchange, except use tokens to represent ownership of the stocks.

They bought a Wall Street firm that is already approved by SEC to trade stocks.

This can potentially create new, additional opportunities for StockBet.

[Red-Apple]

i didn't understand what the ICO is for! ICO is initial COIN offering, so are they creating their own altcoin? the articles focused on the "Equity Token Exchange" part not what will that COIN be that they are doing a fund raising for?

besides, aren't they already accepting bitcoin as payment? what would be the point of a new coin? it will never be used as bitcoin or fiat are!

[StockBet.com]

i didn't understand what the ICO is for! ICO is initial COIN offering, so are they creating their own altcoin? the articles focused on the "Equity Token Exchange" part not what will that COIN be that they are doing a fund raising for?

besides, aren't they already accepting bitcoin as payment? what would be the point of a new coin? it will never be used as bitcoin or fiat are!

I updated the OP to answer your question.

[digaran]

What was Overstock again? if I could sell my activity tokens for approximately $1,000,000 it would be great, lol stocks are controlled by governments, they are centralized, what we need is Bitcoin, it doesn't care if I'm a low life beggar or not, it allows me to send and receive transactions with a low fee. even after Bitcoin price hits $40,000 the system will remain the same. they offer coins, can we exchange them for cash on centralized exchanges?

[Fred Flintstone]

I will be watching this, thats is for sure

[StockBet.com]

We already plan to gamify the stock market, which is massive.  If stocks can be tokenized, which Overstock is the only project that seems to be able to do it, then it can potentially enable us to provide a whole slew of additional games.

From article:

Byrne said proceeds from the ICO will go to further developing an ecosystem around tZero.

[chocopapaya]

There is one company that I know of that has tokenized it's shares in the company: Lykke.

Each coin represents a percentage share in their company.

Are there more?

But creating a stock market that's decentralized and uses tokens, that is basically a huge slash to brokerage firms, will they follow along?
Or will the tokenized market end up just being a centralized system that uses tokens?

If so, then how is that different vastly different than wall street and how can it ever compete?

[ulhaq]

This is huge news. Someone recently made a post about the idea https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2313116.msg23479856#msg23479856, and I was practically the only person who thought that it would happen, but it's quite obvious that it will happen. Overstock is in a great position by being the first mover, and also interesting is that they are aiming to be SEC compliant.

[Zack15]

The SEC will be stepping in to regulate ICOs soon. This is reaching a tipping point when established companies are participating in ICOs and want investment money without giving any shares out to investors.

[piccionipier]

Yes i saw this a few days ago, they are insane, i am sure that they will not even reach 1/10 of that amount, i haven't seen any ico who could reach that amount of money before since i am in this forum.
Trezos raised more than 200 million dollars but it was because they raised that money before bitcoin jumped from $4200 to $6200 in just two days. They are crazy, of course.