Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 2:00 PM on Thursday, March 14th, 2019
SPONSOR: Esports Entertainment
$GMBL Esports audience is 350M, growing to 590M, Esports wagering is
projected at $23 BILLION by 2020. The company has launched VIE.gg
esports betting platform and has accelerated affiliate marketing
agreements with 190 Esports teams. Click here for more information
GMBL: OTCQB
———————–
Ripple (XRP) and Forte Launch $100M Fund to Integrate Blockchain With the Gaming Industry
Ripple has announced that it will launch a $100 million fund in collaboration with Forte,
San Francisco-based startup that is aiming to leverage the economic models of blockchain systems to build better economies and marketplaces in the gaming industry.
Ripple has announced that it will launch a $100 million fund in collaboration with Forte,
a San Francisco-based startup that is aiming to leverage the economic
models of blockchain systems to build better economies and marketplaces
in the gaming industry.
Forte will oversee the fund that will be allocated towards the integration of blockchain technology
with in-game markets that will allow players to make transactions with
each other more conveniently. In the past, users have often moved to
third-party platforms to sell in-game items.
Speaking to Fortune, Ethan Beard, a senior executive at Ripple’s development division Xpring, is hopeful about blockchain making gaming economies more equitable:
Video games have long been quick to
adopt new technology, from console to the PC to mobile. Now, blockchain
will help game designers who’ve had a hard time facilitating an economy
that can serve all types of players.
As the Fortune article notes, this is an expansion for Ripple, which have previously made a lot of progress in the cross-border payments niche. Should game developers get on board, the use of Ripple’s Interledger Protocol and the XRP token would give Ripple an enormous amount of exposure.
Forte was founded by Kevin Chou,
an entrepreneur with experience in the gaming space. Chou was the Chief
Executive Officer of mobile-focused Kabam and esports company Gen.G.
Forte is backed by the likes of Andreesen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures
and Battery Ventures.
In Chou’s announcement post, he said of the direct interactions between stakeholders in the system:
I envision a future where players can
transact with each other directly instead of only with the developer. A
future where developers don’t need to figure out the maximum value they
can extract from their player base, but instead are creatively and
economically motivated to foster new types of peer-to-peer gameplay.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 4:00 PM on Wednesday, March 13th, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based
venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap
companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just
lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap
exits. Click Here For More Information.
——————-
Kakao’s Blockchain Arm Raises $90 Million in Private Token Sale
Ground X, the blockchain subsidiary of South Korean messaging giant Kakao, has raised $90 million in a private coin offering.
As reported by Bloomberg on Monday, Ground X CEO Jason Han said that IDG Capital, Cresendo Equity Partners and Translink Capital had participated in the round.
The firm is also reportedly planning to raise “a similar sum†in another round starting Tuesday, before launching its blockchain platform in June.
Kakao first revealed its plan to set up a blockchain subsidiary back in March 2018, soon after confirming that it had launched Ground X to develop a blockchain-powered platform as a foundation for application developers. Kakao’s top execs said at the time that the plan was to integrate future blockchain-based services with Kakao’s existing internet offerings, such as the Kakao Talk messaging app.
Ground X launched
a test network (or testnet) for its proprietary blockchain network,
dubbed Klaytn, last autumn. It has already partnered with 26 companies
that aim to run apps on Klaytn, Han told Bloomberg. These include South
Korean video game developer Wemade and video streaming platform Watcha,
as well as a unit of Chinese travel agency Zanadu.
The subsidiary has also said it
will work with the Seoul Digital Foundation, an organization created by
the Seoul Metropolitan Government, to develop blockchain projects
focusing on social and public services.
Ground X could be summed up as “partial or gradual decentralization,†Han told CoinDesk Korea last year, adding that some of Kakao’s services could be decentralized.
He added:
“The token economy is a business model that no one could have
imagined before. Until now, Kakao has only operated in Korea, but
through blockchain we could expand into the global market. That means
taking a portion of the profits we earn as an intermediary and using it
to expand our market by sharing it with users.â€
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:22 AM on Tuesday, March 12th, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based
venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap
companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just
lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap
exits. Click Here For More Information.
——————-
Gold-Backed Cryptocurrency Is Almost Here
Investors will soon be able to buy gold and stocks in the form of cryptocurrency, the same way they might buy Bitcoin.
Paxos, a New York-based firm that already offers a dollar-backed cryptocurrency (known as a stablecoin) as well as Bitcoin trading services, plans to introduce digital tokens backed by precious metals and publicly traded stocks sometime in 2019.
The company launched its stablecoin, Paxos Standard,
six months ago by tying cash reserves to a blockchain—a digital ledger
of transactions that is the backbone of any cryptocurrency. Now, it
wants to take “any type of asset and put it into a blockchain,†Paxos
CEO Chad Cascarilla told Fortune’s“Balancing the Ledger.†The goal is to move assets and settle transactions more quickly and securely and with lower fees, he added.
In order to make it work, Paxos has to ensure that it holds the same
amount of inventory—whether that’s dollars, precious metals, or
stocks—in the “real world†as are registered on the blockchain. “How you
do it with a gold token is how much gold you have in a vault equals how
many gold tokens outstanding,†Cascarilla explained. “How do you do it
with stocks? How many stocks do I have sitting in an account, equals how
many stocks in the blockchain.â€
Closest to reality is likely the tokenization of stock market
equities and bonds, assets which Paxos has already successfully tested
in blockchain transactions, Cascarilla said. “We’re getting pretty
close, and I think we’ll see it in 2019.â€
Cascarilla believes Paxos is the only cryptocurrency company with an
account at the Depository Trust Company, which holds the vast majority
of U.S. stocks and bonds, positioning the firm to potentially become the
first to bring stock trading to the blockchain. Still, Paxos, which was
the first virtual currency company to be licensed in New York, needs
additional approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
before it can roll out cryptocurrencies tied to more traditional
securities. It’s currently awaiting that approval—something the lengthy government shutdown did not help speed along.
Putting commodities on the blockchain is also underway, and “gold is
probably the most obvious,†Cascarilla said, adding that it would be
introduced “definitely this year.â€
Tokenizing precious metals opens up new possibilities that are
currently physically difficult—such as dividing up a gold bar into
smaller denominations, transporting heavy quantities more easily, or
lending the assets out more efficiently, Cascarilla explained. “Having
it sit in a vault but also having it be on a blockchain kind of bridges
those two worlds,†he said.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 8:58 AM on Tuesday, March 12th, 2019
Polymath formed a consortium in close collaboration with KABN (www.kabn.network),
Polymath is leading the effort to make it easier for organizations to create digital securities from traditional assets through partnerships and a community that supports a transparent and compliant process for issuers and investors
TORONTO & SAINT MICHAEL, Barbados & GIBRALTAR — Polymath (www.polymath.network), the global leader in software solutions that enable assets to be digitized, distributed, fractionally owned, and ultimately liquidated, has formed a consortium in close collaboration with KABN (www.kabn.network), a global financial services platform that has developed, among its suite of products, a patent pending, blockchain based, GDPR compliant, Always On, global identification and accreditation as a support service for investors and other types of contributors.
Polymath is leading the effort to make it easier for organizations to
create digital securities from traditional assets through partnerships
and a community that supports a transparent and compliant process for
issuers and investors. Through its extensive service provider network
with firms like KABN, Polymath provides security token issuers with
access to top quality service providers.
“Our solution supports the creation of digital securities from a wide range of traditional and non-traditional assets,†said Kevin North, CEO of Polymath.
“The intention of this partnership is to create a best practice model
for customers who need help with the full lifecycle of an STO (Security
Token Offering). In this model, the issuer would work with an integrated
network of providers who are committed to ensuring that offerings are
compliant with securities laws, rules, and regulations across multiple
jurisdictions and trading platforms, increasing the value proposition by
reducing the distance and friction between investors and issuers. To
date, the full STO path is not clear for most of our issuers, so we
formed this partnership with the intention of making this a less
daunting journey.â€
KABN will also be the first organization to launch its digital
securities offering using this process. More information about the KABN Security Token Offering can be found at: www.KABNtoken.com
“Working with Polymath, KABN supports the compliance requirements for digital securities with its Always On
solution providing a faster, better and more economical solution for
issuers and investors to validate and verify identity, KYC and AML, and
manage liquidity programs,†said Ben Kessler, CEO of KABN.
“KABN is also the first company to tokenize its company assets and
create digital securities with this process, proving the model and
paving the way for others to do the same in a manner that meets
jurisdictional securities rules and regulations and supports a value
proposition for stakeholders, the Blockchain community, issuers and
investors.â€
Polymath and KABN are receiving overwhelming support from the capital
markets and blockchain communities as it introduces the framework to
program partners to advance the creation of digital securities and make
it easier for issuers and investors to interact through decentralized
platforms globally.
Together with Pegasus Fintech (Gibraltar) Limited, a consultant
organization, a consortium of Professional Service providers, Broker
Dealers, Blockchain Developers, Exchanges, Authorized Agents and other
Solution Providers have committed to supporting this process and the
KABN Token offering. The initial parties committing their support to
this growing consortium include:
Polymath Network (Polymath) is a decentralized platform that makes it
easy to create security tokens. The platform simplifies the complex
technical challenges of creating a security token and aims to bring the
multi-trillion dollar financial securities market to the blockchain.
KABN, a integrated financial service platform offering neo banking
type solutions, has received approval by Visa to launch its
crypto-linked card and banking wallet program. KABN has partnered with
Transact Payments Ltd, a European e-money institution and Principal
Member of Visa, global processor GPS and platform technology provider
Panovate to launch the program in the UK and subsequently the EEA in the
2nd quarter of the year.
Branded the Pegasus Flyte Visa card, the KABN card program offers an
“on/off ramp†conversion process for a variety of cryptocurrencies to
fiat together with multi-currency fiat transactions. Cardholders will be
able to use their Pegasus Flyte Visa cards to spend in-store, online,
and at ATMs wherever Visa is accepted globally.
The Pegasus Flyte program will also offer a robust loyalty and
customer engagement platform. The anchor of the program is KABN ID, a
Blockchain and biometrically-based, “Always On†validation and
verification process. This patent-pending, GDPR compliant process allows
for efficient and frictionless customer acquisition and onboarding.
Pegasus Fintech is a full-service Blockchain, technology and
accelerator growth advisory that supports regulatory compliant programs
and offerings.
Forward-Looking Statements: Except for
historical matters contained herein, statements made in this press
release are forward-looking statements. Without limiting the generality
of the foregoing, words such as “mayâ€, “willâ€, “toâ€, “planâ€, “expectâ€,
“believeâ€, “anticipateâ€, “intendâ€, “couldâ€, “wouldâ€, “estimateâ€, or
“continueâ€, or the negative other variations thereof or comparable
terminology are intended to identify forward-looking statements.
Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks,
uncertainties and other factors, which may cause our actual results,
performance or achievements to be materially different from any future
results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the
forward-looking statements. Also, forward-looking statements represent
our management’s beliefs and assumptions only as of the date hereof.
Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update these
forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual
results could differ materially from those anticipated in these
forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in
the future.
Tags: Bitcoin, bloc, blockchain, code, hive, Polymath Posted in Blockchain stocks, KABN | Comments Off on Polymath and #KABN Announce Consortium to Accelerate the Creation, Distribution, and Management of Digital Securities Across Multiple Jurisdictions and Platforms $HIVE.ca $BLOC.ca $CODE.ca
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:55 AM on Monday, March 11th, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based
venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap
companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just
lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap
exits. Click Here For More Information.
——————-
Kakao Corp raises $90M for its blockchain platform
Raised $90 million in a private coin offering for its upcoming blockchain platform, as reported by Bloomberg.
The company is planning to have another round, similar in size, in March
Kakao Corp., the parent company of a South Korean messaging app KakaoTalk, raised $90 million in a private coin offering for its upcoming blockchain platform, as reported by Bloomberg. The company is planning to have another round, similar in size, in March. IDG Capital, Crescendo Equity Partners and Translink Capital participated in the round, per Bloomberg.
The blockchain platform dubbed Klaytn, which is planned to launch in
June, will start with popular third-party services such as games and
travel apps but eventually could support some messaging features
of KakaoTalk. Klaytn already has 26 partnerships lined up with apps that
already have millions of daily active users. The platform aspires to
attract a user base of 10 million accounts within the first year.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 9:54 AM on Monday, March 4th, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based
venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap
companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just
lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap
exits. Click Here For More Information.
——————-
KPMG: Tech Execs See the Future- It’s Blockchain
Almost a full 50% of the executives polled (76% of whom are C-level executives — meaning they have titles like CTO, CEO, COO) firmly believed that blockchain is ‘very likely’ or ‘likely’ to change the way their company does business — within three years. That is a short time, especially in the business world.
By R.R. Hauxley
Plenty of people love blockchain.
Plenty more hate it. But the biggest chunk of people by far are those
who are neutral about it. They neither love it nor hate it. They’re just
waiting for the world to make up its mind — like when VHS fought
Betamax or Bluray fought HD-DVD. Well, the world is making up its mind
right quick — and the winner is blockchain.
A survey was recently released. A big, meaningful one. It was released by KPMG,
one of the top four auditor agencies in the world. They call it the
Technology Industry Innovation Survey and it polls over 740 gigantic
tech leaders across twelve countries around the world. The results are
fascinating.
Almost a full 50% of the executives polled (76% of whom are C-level
executives — meaning they have titles like CTO, CEO, COO) firmly
believed that blockchain is ‘very likely’ or ‘likely’ to change the way
their company does business — within three years. That is a short time, especially in the business world.
Taking that one step further, 41% of these higher-ups also believed
that, in these next three short years, the company they direct will, in
fact, implement blockchain tech.
Perhaps the most telling statistic, however, is the change from last
years survey. Despite the crypto bear market, despite hacks and scams,
the executives who were neutral last year are moving bullishly into the
blockchain believer category. Last year a full 42% of respondents were
neutral on all this and 30% even responded that blockchain changing
things would be “very likely.†Today the neutral camp has shrunk to 24%
— with the majority moving camp to the “we will use blockchain†side of
the story.
So you see, the battle between blockchain believers and
doubters is coming to a close. High powered executives running
multi-billion dollar companies (which produce products and services that
we all use) are learning about blockchain, believing in it, and will be
shaping their companies to use it — all in the next three years. It’s
high time, then, that those who are also neutral take a page from the
tech exec playbook and read “An Introduction to Blockchain.â€
These titans of industry are not making their decisions because of
tabloid headlines. They are educating themselves about blockchain with
proper guides. That is the only way to make proper profits. We should
follow such footsteps if we want to profit from blockchain too.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:58 AM on Friday, March 1st, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based
venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap
companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just
lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap
exits. Click Here For More Information.
——————-
10 Major Blockchain Trends in 2019
While cryptocurrencies took a hammering, 2018 was huge for Blockchain, the technology that underpins Bitcoin and a myriad of other coins.
Blockchain has plenty of use cases outside of the cryptocurrency space with IBM, Oracle, and Amazon and other multi-billion dollar companies trying to capitalize on the disruptive technology.
Now, it’s time to find out what major Blockchain trends will define the current year.  Â
By: Alex Morris Â
From the Internet-of-Things (IoT) convergence to startups for the unbanked — find out what to expect from Blockchain in 2019
While cryptocurrencies took a hammering, 2018 was huge for Blockchain, the technology that underpins Bitcoin and a myriad of other coins. Blockchain has plenty of use cases outside of the cryptocurrency space with IBM, Oracle, and Amazon and other multi-billion dollar companies trying to capitalize on the disruptive technology. Now, it’s time to find out what major Blockchain trends will define the current year.  Â
STOs replacing ICOs
Security tokens (STOs)
have been a hot topic in the crypto space, and it looks like they will
continue to be hot now that Overstock’s tZERO announced the launch of
the new STO platform on Jan. 21. The Blockchain-powered platform will
provide any company with the opportunity to raise funds by launching its
own STOs. Prior to that, the startup made an announcement about the
completion of its utility token distribution.
STOs, which combine the best features of the stock market and
cryptocurrencies, arose as a fully regulated alternative to ICOs, which
turned out to be the passing fad of 2017.
Tokenization creating more investment opportunities
The launch of the Estonia-based DEX,
which buys the shares of the biggest companies in the world in the form
of ERC20 tokens, proved that 2019 is all about tokenization. The
Ethereum-powered startup will allow non-US investors to engage in the US
stock market without any limitations pertaining to their location or
investment amount.
Crypto startup Zilliqa also recently introduced Hg Exchange, a fully regulated exchange that allows accredited investors to buy US stocks.
Tokenization already became a pervasive trend in 2018, going far
beyond the stock market, but this is the year when pretty much
everything will be tokenized – art, wine, real estate, etc.
Blockchain and IoT forming an alliance
Back in January, leading digital security company Gemalto released a report
that states that 23 percent of responders think that Blockchain
technology could be a boon for securing IoT-powered devices. Meanwhile,
almost 91 percent of businesses who do not utilize Blockchain consider
making use of the technology in the future.
The number of IoT-powered devices is expected
to reach 26.66 bln in 2019, but less than half of all businesses can
detect whether their device experienced a security breach.
IBM also illustrated the benefits for this convergence with the help of
their game-changing platform Watson IoT. Apart from bringing more
security to the table, Blockchain significantly simplifies the task of
managing different devices and increases the efficiency of the
transaction.
Wall Street transitioning from dabbling to actions
The fact that cryptocurrency prices took a nosedive in 2018 doesn’t
mean that the global financial industry is going to suddenly give up on
Blockchain. As U.Today reported earlier, Bakkt,
the ICE-backed exchange, was supposed to go live in January, but its
launch was eventually delayed due to the longest government shutdown in
history. Speaking of other ‘big-fish’ players, NASDAQ and the NYSE
plan to launch Bitcoin futures while also being keen on Blockchain.
Since the crypto hub died down, there is a good reason to believe that
2019 will be the year of exciting developments in the Blockchain space.
More decentralized exchanges appearing on the horizon
Decentralized exchanges, while actually living up to Satoshi’s
vision, have numerous usability issues that take a toll on their
popularity. There is no centralized authority that manages the users’
funds, but it’s also a double-edged sword problem – there is no way to
revert a certain transaction if private keys are stolen or lost. Keep in
mind that there are certain degrees of centralization. Case in point:
the Bancor DEX, which suffered from a $13.5 mln hack, though Charlie Lee later claimed that no decentralized exchange can lose its funds.
With that being said, major crypto startups – from Binance to Tron – have launched their own DEXs in order to spearhead the shift towards decentralization in the crypto world.
Governments will continue looking into Blockchain
The wide variety of Blockchain applications are being explored by
governments across the globe (even those ones who are openly hawkish
towards cryptocurrencies). China cracked down on Bitcoin, but this
country is hell-bent on becoming the leader in the Blockchain race.
Shanghai, Guangzhou and other major cities are all supporting Blockchain
developments. As reported by U.Today, the Ministry of Industry and
Information Technology (MIIT) launched
an initiative to incentivize business who are working with the DLT
technology. Moreover, there are specific Blockchain guides in China for
educating government officials.
Estonia is yet another country
that is focused on the e-Estonia program that will digitize the
government. Meanwhile, Dubai could become the very first government that
is powered by Blockchain. The implementation of Blockchain could help Dubai save up to $1.5 bln per year by cutting the red herring and creating a fully paperless government.
Blockchain-powered startups banking the unbanked
Africa, where a substantial part of the population remains unbaked,
represents a breeding ground for different startups that utilize
Blockchain technology in order to increase economic inclusiveness. The Rohingya Project
went even further by using Blockchain to restore the identity of
stateless Rohingyas and give them access to banking services.
Real-word use cases beyond fintech
It is worth noting that Blockchain is the most disruptive technology
of the last decade, but it remains unknown to the general public. Yes,
along with Bitcoin, Blockchain was one of the buzzwords in the tech
space, but it’s all about real-world adoption. According to PwC research,
84 percent of companies have dipped their toes into Blockchain, but
they are not ready to embrace it due to numerous ‘trust issues.’ Those
who will be able to integrate Blockchain into their businesses will turn
out to be the true winners of 2019.
Scalability becoming one of the main issues
Without a doubt, scalability is one of the major bottlenecks of
Blockchain, which poses a major hindrance to mainstream adoption. That
became very evident when CryptoKitties, one of the best-known dApps,
created congestion on the Ethereum network. Bitcoin and Ethereum are
only able to handle seven and 25 TPS (this level of scalability doesn’t
hold a candle to mainstream payment processors in the likes of VISA).
Hence, many promising solutions, such as sharding and sidechains, are expected to be implemented in 2019. Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN),
for example, is witnessing growing popularity with major industry
players, with an eye-popping 830 percent surge in half a year. LN will
significantly boost Bitcoin adoption while solving scalability pain
points.
Blockchain jobs will become more common
Despite Bitcoin, the major use case of Blockchain, taking a hammering
in 2018, the number of Blockchain-related jobs continued to grow
throughout the year. Moreover, as reported by CNBC,
the salaries of Blockchain engineers skyrocketed to $175,000 per year,
which means that they receive the highest salaries in the software
development niche on par with AI specialists. According to Hired CEO
Mehul Patel, ‘there’s a ton of demand for Blockchain.’ On top of that,
Upwork, the leading freelance platform, had a 35,000 percent uptick in
the number of Blockchain freelancers (it’s the fastest-growing freelance
sector).
However, earning a six-figure salary is not an easy feat. Blockchain developers
have to code in numerous languages, including Go and Solidity. As
mentioned above, major companies do not want to miss the boat on
Blockchain, so they are striving to hire talented programmers.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 10:38 AM on Thursday, February 28th, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based
venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap
companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just
lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap
exits. Click Here For More Information.
——————-
A blockchain-based home equity loan platform, Figure, has raised $65 million from various major financial and venture capital firms, tech news site TechCrunch reports on Feb. 27.
The firm, which was founded by SoFi founder and former CEO Mike Cagney, reportedly raised the funds from such majors as Morgan Creek, DST Global, DCM, Ribbit Capital and Nimble Ventures. The recent investment bumps the total funds raised by the firm up to $120 million, according to TechCrunch.
Cagney’s new firm, which reportedly has issued over 1,500 equity
lines, is purportedly targeting older clients who are “cash light and
rich in equity†or “CLAREs.†The company is currently lending $1.5
million per day, a figure which Cagney expects to double every few
months, reports American Banker.
The founder told American Banker, “At the end of 2019, Figure should
look like a robust financial platform that can meet the needs of our
customers.” Cagney also added that Figure is moving into other areas
like wealth management, checking accounts, and unsecured consumer loans.
Cagney’s former company SoFi is partnering with major United States-based crypto exchange Coinbase
to roll out crypto trading support. The partnership with Coinbase will
purportedly allow SoFi to launch crypto services by the second quarter
of this year. CEO Anthony Noto said in an interview:
“Our target audience wants to see what the price of cryptocurrency
is, and to buy it. They have a desire to do that and in many cases they
already are.â€
Noto assumed the role of SoFi CEO after Cagney stepped down amid sexual harassment allegations in 2017. Cagney told American Banker:
“One of the biggest takeaways is that at SoFi, we grew so fast and we
never really understood what we were going to grow into, and culture
never took a front seat. [At Figure] we have a very clear adherence to a
‘no-asshole’ policy.”
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 1:26 PM on Tuesday, February 26th, 2019
SPONSOR: ThreeD Capital Inc. (IDK:CSE) Led by
legendary financier, Sheldon Inwentash, ThreeD is a Canadian-based
venture capital firm that only invests in best of breed small-cap
companies which are both defensible and mass scalable. More than just
lip service, Inwentash has financed many of Canada’s biggest small-cap
exits. Click Here For More Information.
——————-
$66 Million Building to Be Tokenized on Ethereum Blockchain in Record Deal
ICP is about to put this idea to the test. The company plans to tokenize some $260 million in four private real estate and debt transactions, starting with a WeWork-occupied building in downtown Miami, Florida.
For Patrick O’Meara, there is a world of difference between security tokens and tokenized securities.
A security token merely means an issuer is selling a crypto token in
compliance with securities laws. But with a tokenized security, “it’s a
whole different world,†where blockchain technology gives investors an
unprecedented level of transparency, said O’Meara, chairman and chief
executive officer of Inveniam Capital Partners (ICP).
ICP is about to put this idea to the test. The company plans to
tokenize some $260 million in four private real estate and debt
transactions, starting with a WeWork-occupied building in downtown
Miami, Florida. Announced Tuesday, the firm intends to sell tokenized
shares of the building, valued at $65.5 million, likely the largest
piece of real estate to be financed this way to date.
The company placed a deposit on the building last month using an
unspecified amount of bitcoin. Once the other three deals are finalized,
ICP will be auctioning off shares in the assets, represented by ERC-20 tokens on the ethereum blockchain, in the coming weeks.
Shares in the four assets will be sold through what is known as a Dutch auction,
meaning potential investors will place their own bids outlining how
many shares they want, what price they would like to pay per share and
which cryptocurrency they would like to pay with.
Inveniam will accept bids denominated in the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market cap at launch.
When the sale concludes, tokens will be distributed in order from the highest bids to the lowest, O’Meara told CoinDesk.
“The price that every bidder pays will be based on the lowest price
of the last successful bid dependent upon the bidder’s fiat-to-crypto
conversion rate limit,†a press release noted.
In order to participate, potential buyers must hold at least $10
million in crypto, with a minimum purchase of $500,000. The sale will be
conducted in accordance with private placement rules issued by the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission, according to Inveniam.
Tokenized transparency
Perhaps more ambitious than the auction, however, is what ICP intends to do with the tokens representing each share.
A Wall Street veteran,
O’Meara explained that typically, shares come with large amounts of
data, from how they are created, as well as data collected through its
life and performance – which could be 20 or 30 years in the case of some
debt offerings. ICP will put all of this data onto its platform and
associate it with a token, he said.
“We built our entire software, our stack, everything we do, the way
we tokenize the instrument is so the enormous amount of data that’s
associated with the financial instrument … can be aggregated and is
attached to the token,†he explained.
One of the benefits to collecting all of this data into one system is that it is suddenly “uniquely searchable,†he said.
At present, legal documents are converted into PDFs or similar file types, which make them difficult to search through.
If, instead, a company stores the hash and a cipher that is
associated with a legal document on a blockchain, it allows for these
documents to be stored in their native form.
“We can store those documents in their native form, Word, Excel,
because an Excel table in a PDF document is uniquely useless,†he said,
adding:
“If we can store all this data in its native form, and the way that
we have surety is because of the hash and the cypher … you can literally
trace, as a regulator, every document associated with this
transaction.â€
This allows a large amount of data to be stored, which in turn can
allow the investing world to make decisions based on quantitative data
in a way that was not as accessible before, O’Meara said.
Other offerings
In addition to the WeWork building, Inveniam plans to tokenize shares
for a student housing facility in North Dakota, which is being valued
at approximately $90 million; a North Dakota water pipeline worth $50
million; and a multi-family housing facility in southwest Florida worth
$75 million.
Like the WeWork auction, shares from each building will be sold as tokens and can only be purchased using cryptocurrency.
The proceeds will be converted into their fiat equivalents before being passed to the buildings’ sellers, O’Meara noted.
The company may launch other projects as part of this transaction as well prior to the auction’s starting date.
All told, the total value of the four properties will add up to $260 million.
Future of real estate?
Tokenized real estate has become an increasingly popular use case for
blockchain in recent months. Templum Markets, a token trading platform
and advisor, sold a security token representing shares in a Colorado ski resort last year, accepting U.S. dollars, bitcoin and ethereum.
Similarly, security token startup Harbor is selling 955 shares in a high-rise building in South Carolina, though each share is only worth $21,000.
Harbor CEO Josh Stein told CoinDesk last November that using
tokenized shares allowed the company to more easily track shareholders
and verify that they are compliant with relevant securities laws.
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Mastercard, Amazon and Accenture Partner To Establish Transparent Blockchain Supply Chain
Mastercard, Amazon and Accenture plan to connect consumers and producers through its work on a blockchain-based supply chain.Getty
Today Accenture introduced a “circular supply chain†allowing consumers to make more sustainable choices about what they buy. Consumers are also able to tip producers, directly rewarding them for their choices in production.
All of this is made possible through digital identity management and blockchain technology.
Accenture is collaborating with
Mastercard, Amazon Web Services, Everledger and Mercy Corps to build its
supply chain capability. Everyday, whether we think about it or not, we
interact with a global supply chain, for example when we shop, and
these innovations could help us better navigate the system. A recent Nielsen study
shows nearly two-thirds of Americans want a frictionless online
shopping experience and want to support more efficient and eco-friendly
farming and manufacturing. The problem today is that we don’t have much
access to how things are made or who makes them.
David Treat, a managing director and global blockchain lead at Accenture says,
Over the past several years, we have built upon our
longstanding identity work with a focus on the more than 1 billion
people in this world who lack any form of recognized identity. We saw
directly linking consumers and the value created at the end of a supply
chain directly back to help small producers at the beginning as critical
to actually driving real social and environmental change.â€
Treat says Accenture and its partners
are working on in-store, web and app-based implementations where
consumers could scan a unique digital identifier on an item registered
to the people who produced it. Scanning the tag on a pair of jeans, for
example, would give customers its supply chain origins from start to
finish, along with the opportunity to send a token of appreciation to
the people who produced them. This allows the system to benefit not
just huge corporations who know the system well, but also individuals
such as smallholder farmers, who grow crops on small plots of land.
For the 3.4 billion people –
almost half the world’s population – that still struggle to meet basic
needs, we believe that digital technologies are largely untapped.â€
says Tara Nathan, Executive Vice President, Humanitarian &
Development at Mastercard, “Through our work with smallholder farmers in
Kenya, India, Mexico and elsewhere, we’ve deployed digital solutions
helping to drive commercially sustainable social impact – and we
understand that collaboration is essential for this journey.â€
Why Blockchain?
A blockchain provides a public, independent digital record called
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). By distributing a public ledger,
Amazon, Mastercard, Accenture, consumers and smallholder farmers can all
interact with the same information without risk of someone altering the
data.
DLT could benefit consumers and
farmers interacting across the supply chain, helping people across the
entire process by increasing transparency and sharing profits more
deliberately throughout.
Source:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leslieankney/2019/02/25/accenture-mastercard-and-amazon-partner-to-establish-transparent-blockchain-supply-chain/#393a39341f81
