Welcome To The Stock Market 2.0!
This past Tuesday 3/12/19 in Tokyo, I presented an in-depth digital securities and STO keynote alongside leading secondary transactions platform SharesPost with over $4Bn of investment transaction of companies including WeWork, Lyft, Postmates, Robinhood, etc. See the full video here!
With all the talk and gradual work last year on digitizing assets and the exponential effects that blockchain will have on revolutionizing the stock market, I’m proud to say the market is really moving and we are in the building phase of what will be the Stock Market 2.0. This past Tuesday March 12th @ 7pm in Tokyo at the innovation lab Tokyo Impact Hub, brought to you by Deloitte Japan, I presented a key note and provided a detailed education on the STO market and benefits or tokenizing securities. I was currently on a 5 city Asia STO Roadshow, and Sharepost’s stopped by our Tokyo Roadshow event this past 3/8/19 to learn more about what we’re doing and have been as an expert in the blockchain and crypto Asia markets.
SharesPost since 2009 and has built one of the leading platforms for secondary transactions with over $4 billion in secondary market transactions for more than 200 leading technology companies including WeWork, Lyft, Postmates, Robinhood, etc. They just raised a $15M C round to Accelerate Security Token Trading and expansion into Asia.
Entering The New Paradigm Of Digital Securities
Blockchain is making large leaps in the field of digital securities, bringing in a new era of stock market transactions and investments. The traditional securities markets are being transformed by the disruptive technology that blockchain entails, aided by popular phenomena like STOs. Cryptographic security, smart contracts and peer-to-peer interaction within the blockchain network make it the best system to carry out transactions of digital assets.
What is an STO?
A ‘security’ is a financial entity or an investment product that is supported by a real-world asset such as the equity or profits of a specific company. STOs or Security Token Offerings fulfill a similar purpose like in the traditional capital markets, but ownership, life-cycle processes, liquidity, secondary market trading, and everything in between has been digitized with blockchain distributed ledgers and smart contracts. They are records of securities, preserved on blockchain and issued in the form of tokens.
Unlike utility tokens, security tokens represent real-world assets, and their value is directly proportional to the actual value of the company. And, obviously, investors can use cryptocurrencies to buy security tokens. That said, in the future, these STOs could very well pave the way forward for the mass adoption of blockchain into the digital stock market.
STOs comply with regulatory governance, making them a far more reliable offering than ICOs. Only specialized token exchanges are authorized to transact with STOs, as a number of regulatory processes such as investor on-boarding procedures, token list investigations, data sharing etc need to be complied with.
Benefits of STOs (Digital Securities)
Jamie Finn, co-founder and President of Securitize, a leading U.S. digital securities issuance platform suggests that digital securities which follow regulations are potentially the best possible way to own securities, at the present time. Paper-based systems have bogged down the traditional stock market due to opacity, inefficiency, and high costs. Leveraging blockchain for digital securities ensures not only a far more transparent transaction but a higher speed and major reductions in fraudulent activity.
Digital securities also up the liquidity of assets, endearing them to younger, enthusiastic investors. In a traditional capital market scenario where illiquidity can become a restrictive factor, blockchain and STOs are potential keys to the lock.