Security Token News
DTCC Releases Security Token Principles Paper
Crypto advocates interests were sparked this week after the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) released a whitepaper describing fair security token business practices. The whitepaper primarily focuses on post-trade concerns. The release of this document highlights the growing interests of investors in tokenized securities.
The paper lays out a concise market infrastructure in which security tokens must operate within the same rules as traditional securities. While security tokens are subject to the same regulations up to the initial trade, post-trade regulations are lax and in many instances, non-existent. The DTCC wants all players in the arena to operate in the same manner.
DTCC via Bizjournals
The DTCC proposes an identifiable governance structure to institute these regulations. The paper lays out seven areas of concern which the firm believes are critical in protecting investors and facilitating market growth.
- Demonstrable Legal Basis – All distributed ledger platforms must have clear and concise guidelines surrounding any financial products offered.
- Identifiable Governance Structure – Platforms offering security tokens must have appropriate governance support systems in place. These systems provide risk management.
- Identifiable Procedures and Systems to Ensure Settlement Finality – All security tokens are required to provide clear settlement of all transactions.
- Security Token Issuance, Custody, and Asset Servicing – Security tokens should have safety control measures in place to mitigate the chance of loss. These measures should include internal controls and robust accounting practices.
- Resilience – All security tokens must prove that they can operate securely in the marketplace.
- Required Record Keeping – All security token platforms must be able to secure their client’s information. Additionally, this information needs to be available to regulators upon request.
DTCC
The DTCC is a US-based firm that provides financial markets with clearing and settlement services. Originally, the DTCC’s task involved updating the aging securities token processes in use during the 1970s and prior. During these times brokers hand to physically exchange certificates. As you could imagine the process was expensive and time-consuming. Today, the DTCC performs securities exchanges on behalf of investors. The firm is a central securities depositary that provides custodial services to the global financial markets.
Market Power
As the central securities depository, the company holds incredible sway in the market. To give you an idea of just how large the firm is, in 2011 DTCC settled $1.7 quadrillion in transactions in the US alone. The company works with regulators from across the globe to help quell security concerns in the market.
Today, the DTCC works with lawmakers, regulators, and key stakeholders in the US, Asia, Australia, and Europe. The company is an advocate for sound public policy. In the past, the DTCC collaborated on both national and local financial regulations.
DTCC and Global Regulations
You can expect that these latest recommendations influence the future regulations of many nations moving forward. Consequently, these guidelines could create momentum for global security token regulations in the near future. For now, many governments are still clueless on how to handle the digitization of the economy.
$250 million DSO
One of the largest digital security offerings, to date, has recently been announced. In an upcoming DSO, Australian based, PCF Capital, will be hosting a whopping $250 milllion event, aimed towards the mining and resource sector.
This DSO will be made possible through the use of KoreConX and their digital securities issuance platform. By choosing to use KoreConX, PCF Capital will be gaining access to the KorePartners. This is a network of strategic partnerships which KoreConX has been developing for some time.
This offering will be open to accredited investors in select countires, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and more.
Commentary
In making their announcement, representatives from each, PCF Capital and KoreConX, took the time to comment on the development discussed here today. The following is what each had to say on the matter.
Liam Twigger, Managing Director at PCF Capital, stated,
“We are a global company that requires a global solution. We selected KoreConX because it will allow us to remain compliant with regulations not only in the USA and Australia but in multiple other jurisdictions around the world…This is a very important step in the history of PCF and we want to make sure our investors are protected and have a platform to be able to manage the entire lifecycle of the digital securities. That’s why we are using the best possible tools for the job.”
Oscar Jofre, CEO at KoreConX, stated,
“We are disruptors and what better way to do that than work with one of the world’s oldest sectors adopting Digital Securities for their offering. PCF Capital’s global reputation in the mining sector made the decision easy for us to bring them on as clients to our platform…Now is the time for the traditional investor to understand the value and trust of digital securities. Having a global offering of this magnitude heavily investing in a Digital Securities Offering is great for the industry as a whole. Many more will follow once the infrastructure is in place for it, and this is what we are doing with the KoreProtocol.”
PCF Capital
PCF Capital is an investment banking group, which is headquartered in Australia. Since being founded in 1999, PCF Capital has gone on to manage over $3.5 billion in deals.
Operations are overseen by Managing Director, Liam Twigger.
KoreConX
KoreConX was founded in 2016, and is headquartered out of New York. Above all, KoreConX has been striving to become the most comprehensive platform for private capital markets. This means developing in-house solutions, and partnerships which facilitate needs within the digital securities sector. To date, KoreConX has begun seeing adoption of their platform, as multiple DSOs are scheduled.
Company operations are overseen by CEO, Oscar Jofre.
In Other News
I recent months, KoreConX has found themselves in our headlines on various occasions. Check out the following articles to learn a bit more about what this promising company has been up to.
KoreConX the Protocol of Choice for Upcoming Digital Security Offering by 3iQ
BankRoll Ventures and KoreConX Aim to Tackle Security Token Offerings
KoreConX Partners with SME Brokers
Failure to Launch
On a disappointing note, Blockport has announced the cancellation of their ongoing security token offering. After launching the event, roughly 1 month ago, the team has indicated that they have failed to attract their minimum threshold of investments.
This comes as a letdown to the industry, as Blockport represented one of the first security token offerings to be offered through the Tokeny platform. To date, only a handful of STOs have taken place through ANY issuance platform.
Future Aspirations
While Blockport will be returning investments to the few participants in their STO, they have indicated that this is not the end for them. Their intent is to scale back operations in the short term, reflect, and establish a path for future growth.
This means that the platform will be shutting down in the coming weeks, revering to a ‘development mode’.
Commentary
Blockport CEO, Sebastiaan Lichter, elaborated on the cancellation in a statement to the public. The following is what he had to say on the matter.
“In the past few months our team has worked extremely hard to launch the first round of our STO, and yesterday this ended after being open for almost one month…In short, the results of the fundraise are not sufficient to proceed with the issuance of BPS tokens.”
Despite this, Sebastiaan Lichter remained confident in the future of blockchain. He continued,
“We still see a lot of opportunities in this industry and have built a top performing trading platform that many people love to use and which has had almost zero downtime or issues since we launched it in the summer of 2018…Whilst developing our platform, our goal is to explore opportunities that support a restart of the Blockport platform in the future.”
BlockPort
Operating out of Amsterdam, Blockport is a Dutch company, which was launched in 2017. Under the watch of CEO, Sebastiaan Lichter, Blockport has developed and launched a trading platform, tailored toward, both, utility and security tokens.
The security token offering, discussed here today, was launched through the Tokeny issuance platform, on March 31st, 2019.
Tokeny
Tokeny is a Luxembourg based company, which was launched in 2017. Above all, Tokeny acts as an issuance platform, providing companies with solutions for the tokenization of assets. Tokeny was responsible for facilitating the Blockport STO – For their part, the event went off without a hitch.
In Other News
While the failed STO is an unfortunate situation, BlockPort is by no means alone. For a variety of reasons, there have been various deals to have fallen through in the past few months. The following articles detail a couple of these situations.
Harbor Cancels Convexity Properties STO
Due Diligence Process Delays tZERO Investment
BitBond Bounty
BitBond, a blockchain company hosting a FINRA approved STO, has recently announced the launch of a bounty program. This program was launched in an attempt to raise market awareness of their ongoing security token offering.
This STO, scheduled to be live until early June, has seen modest success thus far, with investors contributing over €2 million to date. This puts them well on their way to raising the minimum €3 million in the event.
In an attempt to ensure the minimum €3 million threshold is met in their STO, the bounty program consists of 6 main ways in which participants can be rewarded.
- Hunter Bounty
- Referrals leading to bounty program participation
- Affiliate Bounty
- 5% commission on referrals leading to investments over €10,000
- Signature Bounty
- Token compensation for active BitcoinTalk users which advertise the STO in their signature.
- Creative Bounty
- Rewards for creative advertising in the form of memes, gifs, images, etc.
- Social Media Bounty
- Compensation for STO promotion through qualified Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Telegram accounts
- Content Bounty
- Rewards for creation of articles, and videos, which raise awareness about the BitBond STO.
Bounty Programs
A bounty program is a promotional event, aimed towards raising awareness of a fundraiser. Participants in such programs are typically compensated for promoting a company with tokens. Promotional tasks are often varied, such as writing articles, attaining referrals, reporting bugs, and so on.
While bounty programs were commonplace throughout the ICO boom, the concept is new when being applied to security token offerings. Time will tell if this promotional tool is an effective one when dealing with this new form of fund raising.
Commentary
BitBond CEO, Radoslav Albrecht, commented to CrytoGlobe on the choice to host a bounty program. He stated the following.
“Since our launch in 2013 Bitbond has always worked closely with the crypto and blockchain community. This bounty program gives us the opportunity to engage further with our community, reward Bitbond early adopters and spread the news about our new groundbreaking project, the Bitbond STO.”
BitBond
BitBond is a Germany based company, which was launched in 2013. Above all, BitBond utilized blockchain to facilitate financial services. This primarily includes the issuance of business loans.
Company operations are overseen by Founder and CEO, Radoslav Albrecht.
We recently detailed BitBond and their FINRA approval – a feat not achieved by scores of applicants prior to BitBond. Check out the details to this success HERE.
In Other News
Beyond BitBond utilizing the Stellar blockchain for issuing security tokens, Stellar has experienced growing levels of adoption in recent months. The following articles demonstrate various ways in which this adoption has occurred.
Smartlands Releases Stellar Powered Wallet Supporting security Tokens
Stellar Chosen by Wevest for Security Token Offering Platform