Security Token Stories

Nimit Sawhney is the CEO of Voatz, one of the leading blockchain-based voting platforms in the United States -- with more than 80,000 votes cast on the Voatz platform across more than 50 elections since 2016. In this episode, Nimit and Derek talk about the current problems that exist with electoral voting – including friction and inefficiency, lack of voter participation, human error – and why the time might be arriving for state and federal elections powered by mobile cameras, biometrics, and blockchain technology. We also discuss how COVID-19 has accelerated the demand to fix a number of fragile systems across the U.S. – including voting, supply chains, and financial infrastructure like the trading of securities.

Stephen McKeon is a Partner at Collaborative Fund, a SF/NY venture fund investing in blockchain-based financial infrastructure with an eye towards the future of our financial markets. Stephen is also a finance professor at the University of Oregon and one of the sharpest thinkers in the security token space. In this conversation, Stephen and Derek dive right in to topics like cryptoasset valuation, security token base layers, decentralized finance – projects like DeFi Money Market, Chainlink, MakerDao, MetaCartel Ventures, OpenLaw’s ‘The Lao’ – and other projects that implicate security tokens and blockchain-based finance. Stephen wears a number of hats across the blockchain space, and he shares a ton of great insights about how he’s evaluating both the security token industry and larger blockchain space today.

Luis Macias is the CEO at GrainChain, a Texas-based blockchain platform for facilitating contracts, records, payments, financing, and other transactional data for supply chain ecosystems. GrainChain has nearly 1500 active participants on its blockchain supply chain platform – including suppliers, farmers, inventory elevators, and buyers of dry grain in Mexico, Honduras, and the United States. In this episode, Luis and Derek talk about the problems that exist today with supply chain management for all unique players during a commodities’ lifecycle. They also discuss the path of automating out human error and mistake by integrating blockchain solutions for tracing and settlement and using adjacent technologies like IoT. Finally, Luis talks about the perfect storm of problems caused by COVID-19 that’s currently disrupting supply chains all across North America.

Derek Edward Schloss is the Director of Strategy at Security Token Academy, the leading educational platform for the security token industry. In this episode, Derek reads his latest published piece -- "Security Tokens and The Formatting Revolution". In the episode, Derek explains that the idea of taking securities and placing them on blockchains can be best understood as a simple formatting revolution that’s three thousand years in the making. Derek walks through the history behind the different formats (oral, written, electronic, blockchains) humans have used to amplify the laws and legal principles for contracts and securities over the last three thousand years -- up through today.

Bruce Fenton is the CEO at Chainstone Labs and owner of Watchdog Capital – an SEC-registered FINRA broker dealer for the security token industry. In this episode, Bruce and Derek chat through the blockchain and digital securities industry in light of recent COVID-19 events – including the $2T stimulus package recently passed by our U.S. Congress. They also dive into Bruce’s decades-long background in public markets, wealth management, finance and eventually – its intersection with blockchain technology. Bruce shares his thinking on the opportunity for security tokens, ideas to improve our securities rules and regulations to better facilitate blockchain-based securities, and how COVID-19 might speed up the role of blockchain’s influence on our society in the future.

Dan Doney is the CEO of Securrency, a security token firm focused on enhancing financial infrastructure and interoperability across the world’s asset markets. In this episode, Dan and I talk about COVID-19’s influence on the decentralized finance space. We also cover the mapping of security token technology to ‘DeFi’ in the future, WidsomTree’s strategic investment in Securrency’s $17M Series A earlier this year – and why security tokens may eventually disrupt the ETF model. Finally, Dan and I touch on the implications of the recent COVID-19 pandemic to the security token industry – and whether this helps speed up or slow down the inevitable shift to a tokenized future.

Patrick Byrne is the former CEO of Overstock.com, and a long-time blockchain technology advocate. Patrick has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and Asian students from Dartmouth, a master’s in philosophy in ethics from Cambridge University, and a doctorate in philosophy from Stanford University. Patrick has spoken frequently over the years about the role blockchain technology will play in redefining ownership and the exchange of value in our capital markets. In this episode, Patrick and Derek continue a conversation from March of 2019 – where they originally discussed Patrick’s “Blockchain Tech Stack for Civilization”. Patrick recaps the original ideas he shared, along with an update on how these different pillars may be shaping up across the blockchain industry in 2020. Patrick and Derek also dive into topics like the role of Coronavirus on the current macro environment, recent rate cuts announced by the Federal Reserve – and blockchain’s role in the future in light of these events.

Marc Boiron is a blockchain attorney and FisherBroyles Partner. FisherBroyles is a cloud-based full service law firm “for the twenty-first century” – with law offices in cities across the United States. Marc’s legal practice includes the intersection of securities laws with blockchain-based digital assets. In this conversation, Marc and Derek talk through SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce’s recent ‘Safe Harbor’ proposal, which aims to remedy some of the issues the industry has seen in the application of securities laws to digital assets. The episode kick off walking through a background on the different approaches blockchain networks have taken to bootstrap their networks over the last decade. Marc also evaluates the ‘Safe Harbor’ itself and its proposed provisions. Finally, Marc and Derek work through the various pieces of feedback attorneys and builders in the space have provided in the weeks after the ‘Safe Harbor’ proposal was announced and detailed.

Igor Telyatnikov is the CEO and Co-Founder at AlphaPoint, a white label platform for cryptoasset exchanges, brokerages, and the tokenization of assets. AlphaPoint’s tools allow teams to quickly and securely launch their own digital asset exchanges using AlphaPoint’s full stack exchange technology -- and also allows projects to create blockchain-based digital assets using AlphaPoint’s “Asset Digitization Software”. In this conversation, Igor and Derek talk through the two core arms of AlphaPoint’s technology stack, its partnership with Elevated Returns and Securitize to tokenize $1B in real estate on the Tezos blockchain -- and trade that real estate on the AlphaPoint-powered ER-X exchange -- and finally, how Igor views the evolution of the security token space having built cryptoasset infrastructure used in jurisdictions across the world.

Gabriel Shapiro is a blockchain attorney and writer focusing his practice on the intersection of securities law, corporate law, and blockchain networks. Shapiro has published a number of pieces on this intersection -- specifically, the tokenization of corporate capital stock, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and sufficiently decentralized blockchain networks. In this conversation, Gabriel and Derek talk about all three of these areas -- blockchain-enabled public markets, the future of decentralized decision making, and Gabriel’s thesis on embracing securities laws for token-enabled distributed networks.

Dave Hendricks is the CEO of Vertalo, a blockchain-agnostic cap table solutions company for security tokens. Vertalo aims to build "the operating system for digital assets". In this conversation, Dave and Derek talk about Vertalo's origin story, how Vertalo connects all major players of the security token ecosystem together, and Vertalo's recently-announced tokenized real estate partnership with custody giant Prime Trust.

Stephen McKeon is a Partner at Collaborative Fund, a SF/NY venture fund investing in blockchain-based financial infrastructure with an eye towards the future of our financial markets. Stephen is also a finance professor at the University of Oregon and one of the sharpest thinkers in the security token space. Previously, Stephen joined Derek on Security Token Stories Episode #2 to chat about his “Security Token Thesis” paper and how security tokens will dominate previous methods of reporting and trading ownership through a number of killer features that security tokens and distributed ledgers enable. In this conversation, Stephen and Derek build on that episode by taking a look back at the security token industry in 2019, trends that Collaborative Fund is seeing in the decentralized finance and DAO spaces, and how all these new areas of interest may intersect with security tokens and traditional finance in 2020 and beyond.

Saum Noursalehi is the CEO of tZERO, an end to end security token lifecycle and trading platform. tZERO’s goal is to make capital markets more efficient, reliable, and accessible through digitization and blockchain-based technology. The tZERO team has created a number of tailored products that aim to improve traditional markets— including the tZERO ATS and trading platform, the tZERO Crypto App, and the Boston Security Token Exchange — a joint venture with BOX Digital that aims to be the first regulated Security Token Exchange in the United States. tZERO is a Security Token Academy Gold Corporate Member. In this conversation, Saum and Derek discuss the problems that currently exist within the capital markets, how the tZERO stack of technology aims to solve these issues, and the security token trends Saum continues to see as his team builds out the tZERO platform. In addition, Saum shares details on its partnership with BOX Digital to create the first Security Token National Stock Exchange, its recent SEC-published rulebook, and how the platform aims to link up with the rest of the security token ecosystem.

Jimmy Bingham is the SVP of Business Development at Prime Trust—a technology-driven trust company that provides financial infrastructure solutions for the leading global exchanges, OTC desks, platforms, broker-dealers, stablecoins, and more. Prime Trust's stack of APIs and technology solutions help power some of the largest names in the digital asset space — including Binance, Huobi, Bittrex, OKCoin, and many more. In Q1 of 2020, Prime Trust will launch its new TREATs platform for tokenized real estate asset trusts. This new security token platform aims to eliminate some of the largest inefficiencies associated with capital raising and investing for REITs and the real estate investment trust industry.

Jehan Tremback is the CEO and Co-Founder of Althea, a team building a decentralized internet network that allows routers to pay each other for internet bandwidth, peer-to-peer (P2P). Althea encourages and empowers any individual to become their own internet service provider, and earn money by providing internet service to their neighbors and local businesses. In this interview with STA’s Derek Edward Schloss, Tremback walks through his history in the San Francisco hacker space, the opportunity and benefits of mesh networks, the problem with the top-down internet service provider (ISP) model today, how the Althea system and blockchain will work, why the team incorporated MakerDao’s ‘Dai’ stable token, and why the team decided to use blockchain crowdfunding firm Republic to undergo a compliant security-wrapped token airdrop (Reg CF) to bootstrap new communities on the Althea blockchain. Subscribe to the Security Token Edge Newsletter: https://www.securitytokenacademy.com/info/security-token-edge-landing-page-2209/?utm_source=STA-YouTube&utm_medium=OrganicVideoPost&utm_content=YouTubeVideo For more videos and interviews:https://www.securitytokenacademy.com/info/security-token-edge-landing-page-2209/?utm_source=STA-YouTube&utm_medium=OrganicVideoPost&utm_content=YouTubeVideo For more information visit:https://www.securitytokenacademy.com/ Disclaimer: We remind our listeners to carefully read the disclaimer information on our website at www.securitytokenacademy.com, Importantly, the law concerning the evolution of securities crowdfunding inside blockchain-based environments is still a work in progress by regulators and legislators around the world. Security Token Academy considers the information to be provided in this podcast to be of interest to our listeners, but we make no representation as to how or whether any campaigns we discuss fit into investment and securities regulatory systems.

Thomas Borrel (Chief Product Officer) and Adam Dossa (Head of Blockchain) are building security token software at Polymath, a tokenization platform that aims to make the creation, issuance, and management of security tokens simple.In this interview with STA’s Derek Edward Schloss, Borrel and Dossa walk through the limitations of public blockchains like Ethereum for the security token industry, and why Polymath decided to work on their newest initiative—the Polymesh Blockchain. The Polymesh Blockchain is a new blockchain optimized for security tokens, that aims to bring regulatory compliance and institutional confidence to blockchain-based securities. The interview also covers the library of compliance standards Polymath has helped create with ERC1400, and what Borrel and Dossa envision for the future of security tokens—including its intersection with DeFi and “Open Finance.”

Douglas Pepe is an instructor at GW Law teaching "Blockchain Law and Policy," an attorney and Partner at Joseph Hage Aaronson law firm, and co-founder at Mango Farm Assets building asset tokenization software on top of the Ravencoin blockchain. In this interview with STA's Derek Edward Schloss, Pepe talks about how he approaches teaching blockchain topics to new students at GW School of Law, the current state of securities guidance from the SEC for new and existing token projects, and why Pepe believes tokenization might be the future of asset ownership. Pepe also discusses his much-viewed TED Talk on blockchain and tokenization, and why he decided to start building Mango Farm Assets —a new piece of software that makes it easy to "tokenize any asset" on top of the public Ravencoin blockchain.

In this episode of Stories Token Stories Host Derek Edward Schloss sits with Jor Law, co-founder of Verify Investor. The Jobs Act of 2012 and its limitationsAccredited Investors under United States LawBlockchain in the crowdfunding industryTzero acquiring Verify InvestorWhat the future holds for the state of the Security Token Industry

Luc Falempin is the CEO at Tokeny, a Luxembourg-based tokenization platform for regulated securities. Tokeny is a technology provider and end-to-end platform to issue, manage, and transfer regulated security tokens. In this interview with STA's Derek Edward Schloss, Falempin walks through the Tokeny platform, and where Tokeny is seeing the most tokenization for demand right now. Falempin also discusses why he believes Ethereum is the most influential blockchain for security tokens. His team is also researching projects like Facebook’s Libra for issuing security tokens in the future. Finally, Falempin discusses Euronext, the largest stock exchange in continental Europe. Euronext recently invested and purchased a significant equity stake in Tokeny—and what that investment means for the future of Tokeny, and Tokeny-powered security tokens.

David Hoffman is the COO at RealT, an Ethereum-based platform for tokenizing real property ownership in the United States. RealT empowers investors around the globe to buy into the US real estate market through compliant, fractional, tokenized ownership–powered by blockchain. RealT’s first tokenized properties are single-family homes in Detroit, Michigan.In this interview with STA's Derek Edward Schloss, Hoffman walks through the RealT platform, the launch of its first tokenized properties in Detroit. RealT's unique opportunity for overseas investors, and why RealT decided to tokenize on the Ethereum blockchain—including its platform integration of MakerDao’s Dai stable token.

Nick Cowan is the CEO and Founder of the Gibraltar Stock Exchange Group, a financial services portfolio that includes the Gibraltar Stock Exchange, the Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange, JUNO Fund Administration, FORT Advisory Firm, and HASHTACS, a fintech subsidiary and developer of the proprietary STACS blockchain and protocol. The Gibraltar Stock Exchange aims to be one of the world’s first regulated stock exchanges to list and trade security tokens.In this interview with STA's Derek Edward Schloss, Cowan walks through the launch of Gibraltar Stock Exchange in 2014, Gibraltar’s blockchain initiatives, and working closely with Gibraltar’s regulators and legislators to create a regulated security token exchange.

Stephen McKeon is a partner at Collaborative Fund, a venture fund investing in blockchain-based financial infrastructure with an eye towards the future of our financial markets. McKeon is also a finance professor at the University of Oregon, and one of the leading thinkers in the security token space. In addition to his role at Collaborative Fund and the University of Oregon, McKeon is also the chief strategy advisor at Security Token Academy.In this interview with STA's Derek Edward Schloss, McKeon walks through The Security Token Thesis, a paper he published in May 2018. In the paper, McKeon argues that for a number of traditional assets, security tokens will simply dominate previous methods of reporting and trading ownership. Over the course of the episode, Stephen McKeon and Derek Edward Schloss walk through the eight "killer features" that form what McKeon describes as the thesis powering the security token movement.

Each episode, Derek Edward Schloss, Security Token Academy’s Director of Strategy, sits down with industry insiders. To ask the questions that professionals, service providers, investors, and enthusiasts want to know most about the digitization of assets, securities, and finance.In this episode, Derek and Bryand discuss:Republic's background and how Republic Crypto was formedThe benefits of regulated "Airdrops."The launch of Republic's "Note" tokenThe benefits and limitations of Reg CF and Reg A+ as it relates to security tokensWorking with regulations to update securities regulations in the futureWhat the future holds for Republic and blockchain securities in 2019 and beyond