Into the Crypto Breach: Tezos STOs, an ETF, Updated ICO Guide, Oh My!
February 11, 2019 by
The march of tokenization may have steadied after the 2018 cryptoeconomy crash. And a pure in the U.S. may seem a pipe dream for now. But entrepreneurs and regulators are still filing into the crypto breach with their own ideas on innovation.
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Prominent Entrepreneur Eyes Security Token Offerings (STOs) on Tezos
to date has been considered the standard bearer for tokenizing real-world assets. Yet competing smart contracts platform now has a “pipeline of real assets in excess of USD $1B” waiting to be tokenized , a real-estate portfolio ran by Belgian entrepreneur Stephane de Baets.
It won’t be the first crypto play for Elevated Returns, who is working with compliance platform Securitize on the deals. Last year, the financial group leveraged the to tokenize the St. Regis Resort in Aspen, Colorado.
That initiative raised $18 million USD. And the group is now eyeing more than 50 times that sum in forthcoming property-backed STOs. But it’ll be turning to Tezos for the issuances, not , going forward.
“Having worked closely with regulators and local authorities around the world, we understand the need for the highest security and compliance features,” de Baets said of the pivot.
“There is no better solution than working on a Tezos-based implementation. We have a number of very high-profile deals lined up and we could not afford to compromise the technological product.”
If the plans pan out, slot it as an early victory amid the cryptoverse’s wider and fledgling rat race among a growing number of smart contract platforms.
A Crypto ETF Coming? Maybe, But Not in the Way You’re Thinking
America’s first has yet to materialize.
But a filed by Reality Shares with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission () on Feb. 11th points toward a different way to a crypto : a fund that would focus on both virtual and fiat currency.
To do that, Reality Shares’s proposed , specifically titled the Blockforce Global Currency Strategy , would invest in money market mutual funds, sovereign debt instruments, and futures.
The limited, rather than total, exposure to in the fund may make the more palatable to an that’s taken a conservative approach to pure crypto ETFs to date. At least one official at the Commission thinks such an is “,” however.
SEC Updates ICO Guide
Though calls for further clarity continue to sound in the U.S., the has repeatedly put forth its positions on initial coin offerings (ICOs) since 2017.
Accordingly, the Commission updated its public ICO guide over the weekend with added clarifications related to securities exchanges and investor awareness.
Our guide to initial coin offerings:
— SEC_News (@SEC_News)
“If a platform offers of digital assets that are securities and operates as an ‘exchange,’ as defined by the federal securities laws, then the platform must register with the as a national securities exchange or be exempt from registration,” the Commission said in an apparently new section.
“Many platforms for digital assets refer to themselves as ‘exchanges,’ which can give the misimpression to investors that they are regulated or meet the regulatory standards of a national securities exchange,” the regulator added.
The watchdog is thus making sure its language is ever more precise as the cryptoeconomy continues to grow in kind.
What’s your take? What will the crypto ecosystem in America look like five years from now? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images via Pixabay
Published at Mon, 11 Feb 2019 21:09:13 +0000
