The second quarter of 2019 demonstrated a growing popularity of the initial exchange offering (IEO), which has replaced the outdated initial coin offering (ICO) model. The new trend — the key role of which is played by a cryptocurrency exchange auditing projects and organizing token sales — has established itself positively among startups. Crypto market stats show that over 65 IEOs have been launched in the past six months, with about 40 of them having reached their soft cap or even hard cap successfully. About 15 IEOs will be launched in the next three months. Notably, half of them are …

Security token offerings, or STOs, have more or less taken the mantle from their semi-defunct counterpart, the initial coin offering (ICO). Still, the extreme rise and subsequent fall of the ICO has left quite an impression on the cryptocurrency industry. At its peak prevalence in 2017, this novel fundraising prototype accumulated a total of $6.2 billion — but it wasn’t set to last. Come December of the same year, ICOs had become a shadow of their former selves, plummeting in demand. So far, a mere $366 million has been raised via ICOs in 2019, a retrace of 94% from their …

Six major Japanese brokerage firms such as SBI Securities and Rakuten Securities officially established Japan Security Token Offering (STO) Association. The four other members of the new association include Nomura Securities, Daiwa Securities, Kabu.com Securities and Japan’s financial giant Monex, who officially announced the news on Oct. 1. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan STO Association launches in order to support the development of STO fundraising by consolidating expertise in the industry, ensuring compliance with laws and protecting investors. Development of self-regulations Chaired by Yoshitaka Kitao, CEO and representative director of SBI Holdings and an exec at Ripple Labs, the general incorporated …

As the world of finance continues adapting to contemporary innovations, it almost cannot help but drag other industries along for the ride — willingly or otherwise. Film is one such sector currently undergoing a quiet revolt, concocting a radical subversion to traditional models of financing. This is partly due to the emergence of distributed technologies such as blockchain, and it has led to a new concept: the tokenization of everything. In its purest form, tokenization is the act of adding liquidity to real-world assets. A good — if not exact — comparison is depicted in stocks and shares, which represent …

Former blockchain firm ConsenSys’ ventures head Kavita Gupta joined security token project Dusk Network. As industry news outlet The Block reported on Aug. 30, Gupta joined Dusk Network, an Amsterdam-based startup trying to help companies tokenize their equity shares. Dusk Network co-founder Mels Dees claims that the company is also working with a regulated European stock exchange and have partnered with a major cryptocurrency exchange. Fundraising for private companies Gupta, who worked at McKinsey, HSBC and the World Bank, believes that security token offerings (STOs) can address various impediments that keep private companies from tapping into public markets. Per the …

The German-speaking world was highly active as far as crypto was concerned this past week. Among other stories, the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) issued several items of interest to the crypto community, a new fund for blockchain startups launched in Hamburg and an Austrian crypto ATM service filed for bankruptcy following an armed robbery. BaFin publishes summary of current regulation On Aug. 16, the BaFin published a leaflet for issuers of crypto tokens that summarized current German legal standards in the field. By condensing active regulations in such a fashion, the BaFin reportedly hopes to encourage compliance among …

In the last decade, blockchain and distributed ledger technology has had an immense impact on a multitude of industries, with 84% of organizations experimenting with the technology, with more than half (52%) of blockchain projects in the research and development phase, according to the PwC Global Blockchain Survey. The industries making important strides forward with blockchain include financial services, manufacturing, energy and utilities, health care, as well as government sectors, but the potential of the technology is limitless. Ultimately, any business that is looking to simplify the processing method of large volumes of transactions while ensuring the verifiability of these …

In late July 2019, Sony Financial Ventures joined a $14.5 million funding round for Bitcoin (BTC) bank Bitwala. Back in 2017 and 2018, such a figure might not have made many headlines, as crypto startups were raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in initial coin offerings (ICOs). The ICO boom has, however, stalled significantly, with fundraising figures for 2019 a far cry from the massive amounts earned by projects in the two years prior. Many of the tokens that came about during the ICO mania have also lost most of their post-offering value. Since the late 2017 crypto mania, …

Ethereum (ETH)-based security token platform Polymath will terminate its two planned in-house projects to focus further on bringing securities onto blockchain, the firm announced in a blog post on July 4. Polymath is funneling the company’s newly freed resources towards its Polymath Token Studio, a decentralized application (dApp) that has reportedly enabled the issuance of over 130 security tokens to date, the company said in the announcement. As a part of the announcement, Polymath has laid off 10 employees who were working on the two discontinued product initiatives. The company did not specify details about the stopped projects or the …

Latin America’s biggest investment bank, BTG Pactual, plans to shift its security token offerings (STOs), a pipeline of over $1 billion in sales, onto the Tezos blockchain. The announcement appeared in a joint press release published on Tezos Foundation’s website on July 3. The new initiative is a collaboration between BTG Pactual and Dubai-based asset manager Dalma Capital, who plan to tokenize a number of traditional assets using the Tezos blockchain and smart contracts platform. According to the announcement, Dalma Capital is planning to use the Tezos blockchain for digitizing assets in multiple industries, including real estate, equity, lending, as …

Amsterdam-based crypto exchange Blockport will attempt a relaunch after the firm said it would shut down its platform by the end of May, tech news outlet The Next Web reports on June 4. On May 22, Blockport was declared bankrupt by a Dutch court, following the firm’s unsuccessful security token offering (STO) of Blockport Securities (BPT) tokens. Blockport first announced its STO in March, describing its BPS token as a security token that is pegged to a stake in Blockport and enables holders to profit sharing through dividends. Launched on April 16, the STO reportedly offered investors the ability to …

One of the most significant introductions that blockchain has made available in recent years is adding new tools through which companies can raise capital. The technology has made it possible to raise funds for a project from investors of just about any pocket size through initial coin offerings (ICOs) as well as security token offerings (STOs). Typically, these investors put in their money not just in return for a big payday, but they’re usually believers in the project as well. These investors form the community around which new projects are built. This is the concept that popularized the colloquial term …