The First Crypto Corporate Bond Offering..aka Bitcoin Bond from Overstock

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overstock crypto bond offering

BrokerDealer.com profiles retailer Overstock.com’s plan to issue the first crypto corporate bond deal using the technology that underlies cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

Below extract is courtesy of Finextra.com. BrokerDealer.com provides the world’s database of broker-dealers registered in the US as well as a comprehensive directory of non-US brokerdealers based in 30+ countries throughout the globe.

Last Autumn, the firm acquired a 25% stake in alternative trading system (ATS) PRO Securities as part of a long-term ambition to use the core blockchain technology to create a cryptosecurity trading system, in which computer algorithms are used to trade virtual stocks issued by public companies.The company is now scouting institutional investor interest in its first digital bond issues, which is powered by Overstock.com’s TØ.com technology – a name that refers to the fact that trades on the system securely settle the same day, as opposed to the T+3 convention on Wall Street.”The cryptorevolution has arrived on Wall Street,” says Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. “We’re making it official by offering the world’s first cryptosecurity.”According to Byrne, issuing the TIGRcub bonds on the TØ.com platform proves that cryptotechnology can facilitate transparent and secure access to capital by emerging companies. He says that a circular informing investors of the cryptobond offering was distributed on 1 June, 2015.

Overstock.com Gets Into Bitcoin-BrokerDealer Biz with Stake in ATS

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Patrick Byrne,

BrokerDealer.com blog update profiles the latest chapter in CEO Patrick Byrne’s playbook to become a blockchain billionaire and scheme to open a bitcoin exchange via his acquisition of a  25% stake in PRO Securities, an SEC-registered alternative trading system. Whether Byrne is a Blockhead or will prove to be the first Blockchain billionaire remains to be seen, but he is one determined guy.

Online retailer Overstock has stepped up its plans to issue “digital securities” through the acquisition of a 25% stake in alternative trading system (ATS) PRO Securities, according to Wired.

Last year Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne hired developers and lawyers in an effort to create a platform – dubbed ‘Medici’ – that could use the core blockchain technology to create a cryptosecurity trading system, in which computer algorithms are used to trade virtual stocks issued by public companies.

Then, in a recent prospectus filed with the SEC related to the sale of securities, the company revealed: “We may decide to offer any of the securities described in this prospectus as digital securities, meaning the securities will be uncertificated securities, the ownership and transfer of which are recorded on a cryptographically-secured distributed ledger system using technology similar to (or the same as) the distributed ledger technology used for trading digital currencies.”

Details of how this would be achieved have now emerged, with Wired reporting that last autumn a stake was acquired in SEC-regulated PRO Securities, which has now amended its charter to say that it may handle trades in digital securities via blockchain-related technology.

Bryne has told Wired that his firm has already built the blockchain-related tech on top of PRO Securities platform and is now ready to show it to regulators.