Sygnum Bank set to release soccer-themed sculptures as AST’s

Digital asset institution Sygnum Bank has announced a collaborative partnership with highly-accredited Swiss-born artistic sculptor, David Pflugi to issue 6,000 Art Security Tokens, or ASTs, via his new project, Victory Works.

Orientated around the final of three international competitions: 2010 FIFA World Cup hosted by South Africa; 2014 FIFA World Cup hosted by Brazil; and the 2018 FIFA World Cup hosted by Russia, the artwork immortalizes the achievements of legendary players such as Oliver Kahn, Lionel Messi, Ronaldinho, and Zinédine Zidane, among others, with the display of their written signature.

With an estimated collective valuation of CHF 6 million, equivalent to $6.525 million USD, the three assets will be exclusively offered to professional and institutional clientele of Sygnum Bank via an auction sale commencing in April this year. Holders of the AST’s will receive a proportional share of the sale in relation to their holding amount.

According to the official announcement, Victory Works intend to reserve around half of the ASTs for future endeavours, in addition to pledging twenty percent of the overall proceeds to charitable foundations supporting the livelihoods of children in developing nations.

Cointelegraph reached out to Victory Works to learn more the company’s vision for utilizing the retained 50% of AST's, and whether they have identified any specific children's charities, or causes which to donate the 20% net proceeds too.

They stated that: “Once the final sale by auction of the tokenized works of art has been concluded, each token holder will receive a share of the proceeds of this sale in accordance with the number of tokens that they own. The tokens, having thus completed their lifecycle, will then be cancelled ('burned'), including the ones held by Victory Works AG.”

“A charitable foundation specifically dedicated to this project, based in Switzerland, will be established, to ensure that the use of funds for charitable purposes can be traced and verified from the first to the last step… the specific individual humanitarian projects which will be supported… is currently on-going.”

Sygnum Bank has an accomplished track-record with the cryptocurrency space, gaining prominence within the European markets for their progressive stance on digital asset adoption, and positive engagements with regulatory bodies.

In September 2020, the company attained approval from Switzerland’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FMSA) to offer a range of digital asset trading activities, a move which opened up new investment avenues for their native stablecoin Digital Swiss franc (DCHF).

More recently in July 2021, Sygnum became the first banking institution globally to enable staking in Ethereum, offering up to 7% annual percentage yields (APY), and aiming to drive consumer adoption of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

As a result of their positive relations with regulators, the Victory Works AST’s will be “fully recognised under the new Swiss DLT legislation via Sygnum's tokenization platform Desygnate”, according to Sygnum. They also provided greater clarification around the “two to three-year investment horizon” statement in the press release, stating that:

“The life cycle of this investment opportunity is finite. The investment horizon describes the first phase, 2-3 years after initial token offering. After which an exit will be initiated, and the underlying artworks will be auctioned off. This will result in all tokens being "burned" and the profit distributed to all token holders in proportion to their holdings."