How Patrick Byrne Levered a SPAC to Create Cryptocurrency Kingdom

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(Republished with permission from Prospectus LLC) -Patrick Byrne has often been dismissed by contemporaries for being brash, confrontational and someone who just likes to create chaos. Courtesy of a $1million stake in Kennedy Cabot Acquisition Holdings, a Special Purpose Acquisition Company aka SPAC, Byrne is further along on a journey to secure the title of being the cheapest online discount broker and also, the crown to the cryptocurrency kingdom .

Overstock.com, the on-line retailer led by multi-industry disruptor Patrick Byrne has seen its share price surge nearly 100% in the past four weeks, and not because of online shopping spikes during this holiday season. And not because it was the first retailer to accept bitcoins back in the day when no other retailer even understood the concept of distributed ledger and blockchain, the elements that power bitcoin, the ubiquitous cryptocurrency whose price has gone from $500 to over $20,000 in less time than it takes most companies to float an initial public offering.

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Patrick Byrne

Along the way, we can guess that the former online discount retailer of stuff has watched his net worth increase by at least several hundred million dollars, as the shares of all of his various holdings have increased multi-fold. Its because Patrick Byrne has been hard at work during the past number of months executing a stealth strategy by leveraging his purchase of a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) that has made Overstock a virtual holding company whose portfolio of companies now includes (i) Medicia Ventures, a cross between a PE and VC platform that is focused on cryptocurrency enterprises (ii) an on-line brokerage that was formerly a woman-owned broker-dealer known as Muriel Siebert & Co and renamed “tZero” that will enable day traders to make $2.99 stock trades and pay in cryptocurrency, (ii) a stake in Delaware Board of Trade, an electronic exchange run by the former head honcho at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange former vice-Chairman of NASDAQ OMX and positioned as the first and only blockchain based Alternative Trading System fully licensed by the SEC, which will float Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)  and enable investors to buy and sell bitcoin based bond funds that are packaged in similar fashion to exchange-traded funds aka ETFs.

Having a successful ICO is usually easier and costs less than an IPO, the penalties for fraud remain the same. Make sure you document everything and have an experienced partner in your corner to ensure you are meeting obligations to both investors and, eventually, regulators.

But every road has its bumps. A planned initial coin offering (ICO) for Overstock blockchain subsidiary tZERO, scheduled to go live at midnight Monday, has yet to launch as originally anticipated. While little is known about the now nearly day-long delay, a countdown clock on SAFTLaunch.com, the issuance portal for tZERO’s token, has expired without any update to the company’s website or social media accounts. Indeed, CoinDesk’s calls to key Overstock executives, including CEO Patrick Byrne, went unreturned or unanswered today.

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SEC Cyber Unit Brings First ICO Fraud Charge

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ICO Fraud Charge is the First, Certainly Not Last as Initial Coin Offerings No Longer Under Regulators’ Radar

(Courtesy of RTTNews) – The Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday that its new cyber unit has obtained an emergency asset freeze to halt an Initial Coin Offering or ICO fraud.

The SEC noted that the ICO fraud, advanced by “PlexCorps” owned by a mysterious shell company known as DL Innov Inc., which is operated by Canadian resident Dominic Lacroix and Sabrinia Paradis-Royer raised up to $15 million from thousands of investors since August by falsely promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month.

These charges are the first to be filed by SEC’s cyber unit, which was created in September 2017.

The SEC’s complaint was filed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. The complaint alleges that Lacroix and PlexCorps marketed and sold securities called PlexCoin on the Internet to investors in the U.S. and elsewhere by claiming that investments in PlexCoin would yield a 1,354 percent profit in less than 29 days.

Based on its filing, the SEC obtained an emergency court order to freeze the assets of PlexCorps, Lacroix, and Paradis-Royer. These charges are the first to be filed by SEC’s cyber unit.

The complaint seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement plus interest and penalties. In addition, the SEC is seeking an officer-and-director bar for Lacroix, and a bar from offering digital securities against Lacroix as well as Paradis-Royer.

Issuers of Initial Coin Offerings: Don’t Get Caught Short By Failing to Follow the Spirit of Securities Regulations. Industry experts at Prospectus.com can provide sage guidance for staying inside the regulatory goal posts and prepare investor offering documents that conform with the spirit of the regulatory regimes governing ICO initiatives.

The SEC’s cyber unit was created in September to focus on misconduct involving distributed ledger technology and initial coin offerings, the spread of false information through electronic and social media, and hacking as well as threats to trading platforms.

“This first Cyber Unit case hits all of the characteristics of a full-fledged cyber scam and is exactly the kind of misconduct the unit will be pursuing. We acted quickly to protect retail investors from this initial coin offering’s false promises,” said Robert Cohen, Chief of the Cyber Unit.

In August, the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy issued an Investor Alert warning investors about scams of companies claiming to be engaging in initial coin offerings.

BrokerDealer.com expresses thanks to RTT News for the coverage content. For the full article from RTTNews.com, please click here

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BrokerDealers and Buyside: Bitcoin Coming to A Screen Near You

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Brokerdealer.com blog update courtesy of extract from Traders Magazine, the leading publication within securities industry’s sell-side (otherwise known as the universe of registered broker-dealers). Coverage for this story provided by TradersMag writer Gregg Wirth. Visitors to this page who may wish to know more about brokerdealers and institutional investors having an interest in bitcoins are invited to search the brokerdealer.com database.

bitcoinBitcoin, the crypto-currency that initially became infamous as the tender of choice for drug traffickers and mercenaries, may be coming to a trading desk or institutional portfolio near you – and sooner than you think.

“2014 is going to be the year Bitcoin hits Wall Street,” said Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of SecondMarket, a capital-raising platform for private companies and investment funds. Indeed, there is a growing consensus in some corners of Wall Street and the buyside community that the $7.8 billion  Bitcoin industry is going to become the new, flashy darling of investors, with dedicated digital currency funds, venture capitalists and asset managers all chasing after those 12 million bitcoins currently in circulation.

“Digital currencies like Bitcoin are not going away,” Silbert explained. “And Wall Street and the regulators know this, they’ve studied how to deal with it, and now they are starting to understand its potential.” SecondMarket has gone heavy into the Bitcoin phenomenon, launching the Bitcoin Investment Trust, a $70 million open-ended trust that invests exclusively in bitcoins, as well as a dedicated desk of 10 traders who buy and sell bitcoins for the trust and other institutional clients. SecondMarket is also creating what it hopes to be the largest, best-capitalized and well-run Bitcoin exchange in the U.S., and is enlisting banks and Bitcoin-related firms to be exchange members.

“The number of inquiries and requests from finance industry professionals for us to prepare compliant investor offering documents for crypto-centric funds is certainly keeping us busy”, said Paul Azous, CEO of Prospectus.com. “We don’t see this as some type of anomaly that is connected to a short-term fad, many of the funds we are working with are forward-thinking folks who realize that blockchain applications will be expressed in nearly every business process.”

In addition to preparing investment fund offering documents, Prospectus.com helps blockchain-based startups craft white papers, presentation decks that resonate with accredited investors and through a captive network of crypto industry consultants, the firm guides those advancing Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).

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