As we slide into a new busy working week, set aside some time to brew yourself a good cup of coffee and read up on the weekly updates from DigiShares.
In this week’s issue, we cover an interview between our CEO – Claus Skaaning and Sarah Jenkins from BlockChainRealtor.com, an explainer video to help you learn more about our platform and solutions, and also a warm invitation to our Telegram community.
Last week, our CEO Claus Skaaning sat down for an interview with Sarah Jenkins from BlockChainRealtor.com and discussed details about DigiShares’ white label real estate platform and how it will be implemented at RavenCoinTokens.com In this video, Claus explains: 1:50 : How the process will look like for a customer. 3:56 : How somebody pays for tokens. 5:20 : How custody works and how one knows that their tokens are safe. 7:40 : How dividends work in the DigiShares system.
Sarah’s Interview with Claus Skaaning – CEO of DigiShares.io
Explainer Video
We made an explainer video! This is a great entry point for you to get to know DigiShares and our solutions for issuance and management of security tokens & tokenized securities. If you are one of our new subscribers, watch the video here.
DigiShares Telegram Community
We are rolling out a series of webinars in the upcoming months, in which our community members have the chance to connect and ask questions directly to our company’s specialists and sometimes our guest speakers in the field of tokenization.
DigiShares recognizes that fees can be a function of the complexity in running your investments, especially in real estate. Loosening of regulatory limits on private placements worldwide allows companies to take fund raising, management and liquidity provision for their stakeholders into their own hands. Our mission is to help you minimize the administrative costs associated with this, particularly automation of the back-end processes with added benefits being customization and infinite scale. By combining cutting-edge fintech infrastructure and blockchain enabled software, you can now fundraise easier, cheaper within the confines of single or multiple legal jurisdictions. Competitor low-touch technology solutions only provide piece-meal solutions for this. Here is a compact overview of real estate use cases for security tokens and how using the DigiShares platform in particular can save you money.
Liquidity vs Cost matrix for real-estate backed security tokens
1.LIQUIDITY INFRASTRUCTURE
How can security tokens improve liquidity for long duration private investments like real estate, private equity and venture portfolios? Blockchain is international, stock exchanges are national. Substantial capital is being deployed worldwide to establish digital exchanges of security tokens to bridge the two. Real life use-cases from low-touch crowdfunding platforms have already validated how fractionalization enhances liquidity within a closed system. Real estate will be the single largest use case for liquidity pools and help close the illiquidity premium gap through better valuation for the best projects. Our platform makes sure all our client tokens are “inter-operable”, allows to comply with different regulatory frameworks and can be offered at these exchange venues or more decentralizes market venues in the future, accounting for all KYC/AML ownership (incl. automatic rejection of certain countries) and payment details. A less expensive alternative solution is also provided, in a bulletin-board for buyers and sellers to self-clear transactions using an atomic swap within single projects investments. Instantaneous settlement, zero counter-party risk and immediate verification of on-chain ownership are unique features that traditional platform venues cannot offer. For private securities in general, there is often no way for custodians to settle transactions between their institutional customers, limiting institutional ownership of private assets. The bridge that we provide to a digital custodian should accelerate this demand for those that require an extra layer of third-party verification.
2.CORPORATE FINANCE
One of the unique features as a protocol agnostic security token platform is the flexibility to represent various parts of the capital stack like preferred equity and mezzanine loans that can appeal to accredited investors and family offices looking for “equity-like returns” within real estate financings. Flexibility on protocols allows for different classes of shares and other representations of the capital stack in the corporate management system. Cost effective structured-finance solutions can be tailored on a project-by-project basis for property owners – together with other stakeholders such as their real estate, mortgage bank and broker counterparts. Private loans that exist as pdf files can be replaced by digital records containing structured data. Debt token representations of real assets that represent the collateral in the commercial retail property can be easily transferred between commercial buyers and sellers, avoiding expensive title transfer fees. Mortgage banks can make better decisions on their commercial loan books by extracting real time loan repayment delays, rental, vacancy data by integrating with property management software vendors. In the same way tokens can be re-issued for loss, they can be a burden to dissolve a transaction and can also serve a more transitory purpose for intermediaries focused on transactions.
3.FRACTIONALIZATION
The use case for smaller lot-sizes goes beyond individual investing, as accredited investors and family offices looking for diversification can also allocate to medium size projects where illiquidity premiums are more present. For example, in the U.S, most tokenization of equity is done using Reg D 506 or Reg S with accredited investors. In some case, LPs within projects can use our platform to conduct their own syndication or sales efforts. Particularly Private Equity, could be a big beneficiary of this. Private REITs may choose to sell down certain commercial properties, while maintaining some ownership to get the full carry in an eventual sale of single property, meanwhile freeing up funds to invest in new projects. Green field projects with construction loan financings can take off some pressure on pre-sale, allowing for carry through the full sales cycle. Brown field projects that require modification or upgrades can sell some ownership to help fund large capital outlays without over-leverage. Institutional investment funds can use fractionalization to raise capital from outside the jurisdiction of the local project itself. Local financial institutions in many of the most developed emerging markets often have their own criteria – International guarantees can come at a high cost.
4. PAYMENTS
Working with leading payment infrastructure companies, our platform allows for interoperability between major currencies and stablecoins for our users, arbitrating away bank transactional fees. Your end clients will not notice the blockchain layer, as median of exchange can remain regular currency, meanwhile near 0 bank deposit fees will allow for more frequent smaller dividend payments and distributions. This takes away the transactional fee impediment to fractionalization, allowing you to focus on marketing effort instead. Without diving into too much explanation, using our omnibus wallet (virtual wallet within one large custodied wallet) to pool all token holders into one aggregated transaction fee, saves substantial costs. Established stock transfer companies charge $25 per single dividend payment. 1,000 investors receiving quarterly dividends equates to $100,000 USD slippage.
5. AUTOMATED COMPLIANCE
Private placement offerings that fall under certain regulatory exemptions, allow for exclusion of long-form prospectus, legal filing and audit fees. The largest administrative cost saving is custodial from self-administration of ownership transfers. Transfer agent fees will cost your business far more than a software subscription. Traditional roles of a transfer agent – recording transactions, canceling and issuing of certificates, processing investor mails and dealing with lost or stolen certificates can all be automated within the platform. This ability to self-administer is a game changer, although one may choose to use a third-party provider in a plug-and-play fashion, if a regulator or institutional investor requires it. Ongoing regulatory compliance costs associated with annual token holder meetings and tax compliance that comes from automated record keeping and audit standards can be substantial. Post-issuance corporate action management processes are included and dividend distribution and shareholder voting can be done at near zero cost. With blockchain, shareholder conflicts are avoided as all records are indisputable, limiting related legal fees. Personnel costs for legal counsel, investor communications and compliance processes alone that get allocated as part of management fees can easily reach $100,000 a year. Even on-line trading platforms charge outgoing stock transfer fees of $25-50/ISIN.
6.INTANGIBLE BENEFITS
On-chain verification of your ownership can be done with full privacy in mind. A platform administrator can maintain the individual token holders in an omnibus wallet with their digital custodian of choice. The omnibus address is verifiable on the public ledger and together with a separate 2 factor authentification log in to the platform client portal is the closest one can come to on demand certainty of ownership. In the event the client wants to self-custody, that can easily be done. It has no influence on the ability to cancel and re-issue tokens in the event they are lost or stolen. Smart contract automation also means option for error, loss of data on things that require “attention to detail” minimized and certainty of transactions are enhanced. Clients can be notified instantaneously of pertinent changes that may require their attention.
There is no concrete published data on this, but security tokenization has been estimated to provide upwards of 200bps of synergies for private placements of secondary home mortgage loans in the US:
– 100bps reduction in administrative, origination costs
– 100bps in liquidity premium benefits.
For private investment entities where dividends, revenue-streams, back-office reporting needs to be done at least a few times a year, we can apply the same value proposition rationale.
7FUTURE USECASES
Crypto itself is a property management system. But it has its best use cases on the back-end rather than the front-end. We hope our white-label can be gatewayed to help streamline the multiple categories of back-office functions by applying our customizable blockchain solutions to the best of fintech infrastructure that comes available. Areas of interests are ~ Registrar and transfer agency, fund accounting, middle office services, investor reporting, compliance services, front-office technology solution, financial statement preparation, management reporting, performance and attribution and risk reporting.
Many of our current projects are real estate tokenization projects, and for those of you who are specifically interested in real estate tokenization we have created a special page where you can learn about real estate tokenization and how to tokenize your project.
DigiShares is thrilled to share with you this exciting milestone of having 1,000+ followers on LinkedIn. This is a great chance for us to say THANK YOU to all our followers for engaging with us and helping DigiShares to grow. We look forward to welcoming new followers and continue to expand our social media presence.
White paper: Value Proposition for Real Estate Tokenization.
This white paper is a compact overview of Real Estate use cases for security tokens and five ways on how the DigiShares platform in particular can save you money:
1. Liquidity Infrastructure: “Real life use-cases from low-touch crowdfunding platforms have already validated how fractionalization enhances liquidity within a closed system. Real estate will be the single largest use case for liquidity pools and help close the illiquidity premium gap through better valuation for the best projects.”
2. Corporate Finance: “One of the unique features as a protocol agnostic security token platform is the flexibility to represent various parts of the capital stack like preferred equity and mezzanine loans that can appeal to accredited investors and family offices looking for “equity-like returns” within real estate financings.”
3. Payments: “Working with leading payment infrastructure companies, our platform allows for interoperability between major currencies and stablecoins for our users, arbitrating away bank transactional fees.”
4. Automated Compliance:“Traditional roles of a transfer agent -recording transactions, canceling and issuing of certificates, processing investor mails and dealing with lost or stolen certificates can all be automated within the platform.”
Blockchain and Tokenization for Dummies with Practical Use Cases Claus Skaaning
June 14th: ‘How to Tokenise an Asset’ Webinar by AREF
In case you missed our last newsletter, join DigiShares for this online AREF event for some insightful talks and discussions led by industry leaders and experts. Attendees can expect to:
– Take a look at how tokenization can be implemented within the Real Estate Industry.
– Hear from industry experts on the legal and regulatory issues applicable to tokenization and how this affects AREF’s members.
– Hear a walk through of the practical steps involved; a compare and contrast on regulation vs a conventional deal; and a view from the fintech industry on adoption.
The Association of Real Estate Funds (AREF) is the UK-based body that represents the interests of its member funds, those firms that advise and support them and the end-investors. Their membership includes over sixty-five funds spanning the leading real estate fund management houses in the industry, through to smaller, specialist boutiques, with a collective net asset value of over £72bn. They now have more than fifty Affiliate members, a number of Associate members and hundreds of Investor members.
To learn more about AREF, check out their website here.
Each year, we plan with passion and excitement for our annual and signature event #FintechDisrupt – aiming to educate, inform, and inspire delegates about new and innovative opportunities with blockchain technology in the financial industry and in particular with the tokenization of securities and assets. Thanks to the support and commitment from our sponsors, partners and community, Digital Securities and Tokenization Summit 2021 was a huge success. We hope everyone enjoyed the event and it was a worthwhile investment of your time, energy and money.
In case you missed it, we are sending out the event recordings in the next few weeks; if you wish to receive them, please go ahead and subscribe to our newsletter.
And there is much more to come. Stay tuned for our upcoming webinars in the following months. If you have any topics you would like us to cover, do not hesitate to send us a message.
Real Estate Investment and Tokenization: DigiShares on Growing Cities Podcast
In this episode, Viviana and our CEO Claus Skaaning talked about how the real estate and finance industries can capitalize on a future that would be founded on blockchain infrastructure and how does it work. Listen to it here.
Hosted by Vivian M. Addo, a real estate investment consultant based in New York City USA, the Growing Cities Podcast brings together guests who envision a greater future for cities across the globe. A must-listen for those who want to get the insights into the minds of city development officials, real estate investors to urban artists and understand the dynamics that will shape the future skylines of ever-expanding urban crawls. The “Growing Cities” is currently available on Spotify, Google Play Music and Apple Podcast.
June 14th: ‘How to Tokenise an Asset’ Webinar by AREF
Join us for this online AREF event for some insightful talks and discussions led by industry leaders and experts. Attendees can expect to:
– Take a look at how tokenization can be implemented within the Real Estate Industry.
– Hear from industry experts on the legal and regulatory issues applicable to tokenization and how this affects AREF’s members.
– Hear a walk through of the practical steps involved; a compare and contrast on regulation vs a conventional deal; and a view from the fintech industry on adoption.
The Association of Real Estate Funds (AREF) is the UK-based body that represents the interests of its member funds, those firms that advise and support them and the end-investors. Their membership includes over sixty-five funds spanning the leading real estate fund management houses in the industry, through to smaller, specialist boutiques, with a collective net asset value of over £72bn. They now have more than fifty Affiliate members, a number of Associate members and hundreds of Investor members.
To learn more about AREF, check out their website here.
The World Economic Forum predicts that 10% of the global GDP (approx. $7.8 trillion) will be stored on the blockchain in less than 10 years.
The summit is targeted towards bankers, lawyers, brokers, investment fund managers, asset managers, real estate developers, and other people from the financial industry. The purpose of the summit is to inform and inspire delegates about new opportunities with blockchain technology in the financial industry and in particular with tokenization of securities and assets.
The financial industry is transitioning over to a blockchain-based infrastructure where securities will be digitized and represented as tokens on the blockchain. This will result in a much more efficient, cost-effective, and error-resistant infrastructure, where processes related to issuance, trading, and settlement can be digitized and automated to a much larger degree. Due to the built-in consensus and trust in the blockchain, intermediaries that provide guarantees of ownership and value are no longer necessary to the same degree and will have to find new business models in order to survive.
The summit will be a mix of entertaining speakers informing both about actual current implementations and their value proposition, as well as future visions provided by industry experts that can help guide business strategy for years to come.
Make sure you are at the forefront of this financial revolution, join the Digital Securities and Tokenization Summit!
Facilitated networking and matchmaking
We facilitate networking using an app that speakers, attendees and sponsors/partners can join about 3 weeks before the event begins. This is your chance to build your network and find new business and investment opportunities. We will facilitate scheduled meetings and in-app chats.
Our app will be live for a full week after the conference as well.
Founder & CEO at DigiShares. Expert in blockchain business models.
Topic: Blockchain and Tokenization for Dummies with Practical Use Cases. Claus Skaaning, CEO of DigiShares, will review current trends and learnings in the tokenization industry, with a particular focus on the value proposition for real estate and large physical assets.
Topic: Blockchain and Tokenization for Dummies with Practical Use Cases Claus Skaaning
About Claus PhD in computer science. Has worked as a researcher and technical lead for Hewlett-Packard, before founding his first company, Dezide, a software company with focus on Artificial Intelligence for diagnostics and troubleshooting. After heading Dezide as CEO for 12 years, Claus left and started new companies, including Sales on Tap, a sales and exports consultancy company, while also taking part in many other ventures. Claus has extensive experience with developing and managing incubators, being employed in the Aalborg University Innovation incubator, an incubator that accepts and helps around 80-100 startup companies every year.
Founding Partner of Security Token Group, CEO at Security Token Market.
Topic: Tokenization Industry Trends and Forecast About Kyle Kyle is an entrepreneur, advisor, and investor. He has developed a unique perspective through working with digital securities since late 2017 and has spoken around the world as a thought-leader in the security token space since its inception.
Topic: Tokenization industry trends and forecast Kyle Sonlin
He co-founded Security Token Group as a result of working directly with issuers leveraging private securities exemptions, and currently leads the marketing and advertising platform, Security Token Market. As CEO of Security Token Market, he has built the largest ecosystem of security token offerings worldwide and developed a community of thousands of users who actively engage with the hundreds of offerings on the platform, participate in sourcing market data, and collaborate to improve the legitimacy of the industry as a whole. He is also a host of the Security Token Show, a weekly podcast breaking down the latest industry trends and market movers around the world to thousands of dedicated listeners, published each Tuesday on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcast.
Topic: Tokenization Basics and Overview About Alex: Alex Nascimento, MA, MBA is a best-selling author and Blockchain faculty at UCLA where he lectures on Blockchain Business Applications and Security Tokens.
Topic: Tokenization basics and overview Alex Nascimento
In addition to his role of Managing Director of 7CC – Blockchain Investments, a company focused on supporting & fostering the Blockchain industry, Mr. Nascimento wrote the book; The STO FINANCIAL REVOLUTION uncovering regulated & compliant fundraising via Blockchain. Alex got his MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management and has developed training, marketing & blockchain strategies for companies in the United States, EU, Latin America, and Asia. Alex can be found lecturing at UCLA and speaking at main Global Blockchain conferences and Corporate events demystifying securities issuance, business applications and investments in blockchain for corporate leaders, students and entrepreneurs.
Keynote: Polymath Tokenization Perspective, Strategy and Visions for the Future About Thomas: Thomas leads the Product Strategy, Product Management and Product Marketing teams across Polymath’s product portfolio.
Keynote: Polymath tokenization perspective, strategy and visions for the future Thomas Borrel
Prior to joining Polymath, Thomas was Director of Product Management at Extreme Networks where he led Extreme’s Software and Cloud offerings. Prior to Extreme Networks, Thomas was VP, Business Development & Strategic Alliances at BlueCat Networks. Thomas holds a master’s degree from Toulouse University.
Topic: The Tech Investor view on Tokenized Fungibles & Non-Fungibles About Christian: Christian Kameir is a managing partner at Sustany Capital, a thesis-driven venture capital firm investing in decentralized finance, money, and legal technologies.
Topic: The tech investor view on tokenized fungibles and non fungibles Christian Kameir
Chris has been a tech entrepreneur since the internet dial-up days and led the merger of two of the earliest internet service providers in Europe. In 2000 he moved to California to start a technology venture fund. Chris studied classical literature, is certified in neurolinguistic programming, and a graduate of Muenster’s School of Law. He is a board member at OpenTravel, and lectures at Harvard and The Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. Chris writes and speaks on topics ranging from high-tech investing to decentralized finance, identity and blockchain.
Topic: Real Estate Backed Tokens as Collateral About Ajit: Aave is the world’s leading DeFi liquidity protocol. Decentralised finance creates significant opportunities for financial institutions to enhance market transparency, market efficiency, financial inclusion and systemic risk reduction for consumers worldwide.
Topic: The tech investor view on tokenized fungibles and non fungibles Christian Kameir
Ajit leads institutional growth, strategy and partnerships for Aave to enable institutions to participate in decentralised finance. Prior to embarking on his crypto career, Ajit served in front, middle and back office roles at Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Credit Suisse and UBS.
FIBREE co-founder, board member and regional co-chair in the Netherlands.
Topic: FIBREE Market Overview About Jo: Jo Bronckers has a professional background in real estate. He worked for Dutch institutional real estate investors, asset managers and real estate banks before he decided to start his own consultancy company for business development at the intersection of real estate process optimizing and applying technology.
Topic: FIBREE Market Overview Jo Bronckers
Jo is co-founder in 2018 and at present vice-president of the executive board of the Foundation for International Blockchain and Real Estate Expertise (FIBREE, www.fibree.org). At FIBREE he is developing a Unique Object Identification (UOI)-concept for enhanced real estate data-exchange and aggregation. With FIBREE Jo is an active member in different working groups of INATBA. In 2020 Jo became member of the inaugural board of E-CREDA, the European Commercial Real Estate Data Alliance. Further he is advisor to several startups in the realm of blockchain and real estate.
Topic: RedSwan CRE Marketplace
About Edward:
Ed Nwokedi is a Capital Markets Executive with emphasis in sales and transaction negotiation/execution of premium commercial real estate investment assets for private equity and institutional clients.
Topic: RedSwan CRE Marketplace Edward Nwokedi
Todate Mr. Nwokedi has performed over $3 billion in transactions in his brokerage career earning top producer status with leading companies like Cushman and Wakefield and Colliers International. Nwokedi furthered his career into FinTech , founding RedSwan CRE and becoming the leading US marketplace of tokenized CRE products available to accredited investors. Specialties: negotiation expert in creating and executing new opportunities, contracts, debt structuring, asset valuations, urban development feasibility analysis,real estate portfolio consultation , asset liquidity resolution management, CRE Blockchain /Tokenization leader, innovator and industry catalyst. Primary mission is to create increased opportunity access, affordability and investment liquidity for everyone.
Topic: The SIX Strategy for Bringing Liquidity to the Market About Tim: Tim Grant is the Head of Business of the SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) which is looking to become the world’s first fully regulated institutional digital asset exchange and CSD.
Topic: SIX Digital Exchange Tim Grant
SDX is partnering with large financial institutions around the world to bring next generation of equity, debt, derivative and fund based digital assets into the capital markets. Before taking up the role at SDX he was Founder and CEO of DrumG Technologies, a product company and builder/operator of distributed ledger/blockchain technology applications and networks for the global financial services industry.Prior to this Tim was CEO of the R3 Lab and Research Center which is focused on bringing global financial institutions, established and startup technology companies, regulators and central banks together in a unique virtual and physical environment where new distributed ledger technologies and methodologies could be researched, evaluated and accelerated towards production. As part of this mandate Tim was also responsible for sales, sales engineering/pre-sales, investor relations and client relationship management for all R3 products and services.Prior to joining R3 Tim was a Managing Director at UBS O’Connor, a $6.5bn multi-strategy hedge fund, where he was Head of Quantitative Research, Head of Technology and was involved in investing in financial technology. Before this Tim was a Managing Director at Benchmark Solutions, a Warburg Pincus backed fintech startup. Prior to that Tim was a Managing Director at UBS AG in various positions including reporting directly to the Group Executive Board during the global financial crisis as well as running the UBS Delta Americas portfolio solutions business within UBS Investment Bank.Tim has a MA in Materials Science and Metallurgy (First Class) from the Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge and a MSc in Financial Engineering (Distinction) from the Birkbeck College at the University of London.
Topic: Archax Perspective on Tokenization Industry Trends and Future Directions About Simon: Simon has over 30 years’ experience in global capital markets, having worked for trading technology and market data vendors in commercial and product-centric roles.
Topic: Archax perspective on tokenization industry trends and future directions Simon Barnby
Most recently, Simon has consulted with small and start-up companies in the FinTech space, in particular blockchain firms. Prior to this, he was Global Marketing Director at Fidessa Group for 14 years, where he was responsible for all positioning, branding, product and corporate marketing activities globally. Before this Simon also worked for Thomson Financial.
Simon has experience in both digital and traditional marketing, brand development, customer acquisition, go-to-market plans, strategy, entrepreneurship, business development, project management and international commerce. He has also been actively involved in the design, launch and support of trading systems across various asset classes.
Simon has a BSc (Hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Brunel University.
Topic: Blocktrades Perspective on the Tokenization Market and why Regulation is not the Problem About Bernhard: Bernhard Blaha is the CEO of Blocktrade SA, a digital assets exchange based in Luxembourg that aims to be the go-to assets marketplace for everyone, striving to create wealth and joy for a global society.
Topic: Blocktrades Perspective on the Tokenization Market and why Regulation is not the Problem Bernhard
Prior to his position at Blocktrade, Bernhard Blaha worked in the blockchain industry for over 5 years, having been involved in the technology since its beginnings. As a board member of the Digital Asset Association Austria, he is always at the forefront of regulatory developments.
Keynote: Enabling Private Markets Liquidity Through Digital Securities About Solomon: Solomon Tesfaye is the Vice President of Business Development and Capital Markets at tZERO where he spearheads tZERO’s effort to identify companies that are interested in raising new capital through security token offerings, tokenizing their existing cap tables to facilitate secondary liquidity and adopting tZERO’s technology in collaboration with tZERO’s regulated broker-dealer affiliates and partners.
Keynote: Enabling Private Markets Liquidity Through Digital Securities Solomon Tesfaye
Solomon brings more than a decade of combined experience in capital markets, technology and operations. Prior to tZERO, Solomon was an investment banker at Citi within the Industrial Coverage Group. He has worked as a seed-stage venture capital investor, held operations roles within the medical device setting and was co-founder of a web-based platform. Solomon received an M.B.A. from Cornell Business School and a B.S. from The University of California, Irvine.
Head of Institutional Sales, Trading, Custody, and Prime Services at Coinbase
Fireside Chat: Tokenization and a Digital Asset World About Brett: As an experienced business builder and innovator in Financial Services, Brett has accelerated revenue growth with institutional clients and mobilize FinTech companies.
Fireside with Coinbase Tokenization and a Digital Asset World
At Coinbase, Brett is making connections between finance 1.0 and the crypto economy. Coinbase is focused on the continued institutionalization of crypto. This includes continuing to expand the institutional client base, building out the coverage team, introducing new features and services that institutional investors expect, and continuing to educate the institutional community about crypto as an asset class and its role within a diversified portfolio.As the Global Head of Sales at Barclays, Brett hired and developed large teams while incubating and launching multiple lines of business. Brett pioneered the Digital role across sales & trading adopting new technologies and transforming existing platforms, including the creation of a digital bank prototype.Brett is currently on the Advisory Board of Eightfold.ai. helping them scale their AI based hiring and retention platform for Financial Services.In earlier experience, Brett held leadership roles in sales, trading, and structuring at JP Morgan, innovating credit derivatives and structuring platforms.
Topic: Reflection on Success Factors for Adoption of Bank-Grade Tokenization About Mathias: Prior to Sygnum Bank, Mathias was General Manager at RNT Associates, Mr. Ratan N. Tata’s personal investment platform, where he joined as first employee.
Topic: Reflection on Success Factors for Adoption of Bank Grade Tokenization Mathias Imbach
He led multiple venture capital and private equity investments and participated in Blockchain/ DLT related equity deals globally. Mathias started his career at Bain & Company where he led advisory projects for Private Equity Funds, Family Offices and Technology companies. He holds a PhD from the University of St. Gallen and a Master of Science from the London School of Economics (LSE).
Head Digital Corporate Finance & Asset Tokenization
Topic: SEBA Bank and our Vision of Tokenization, Liquidity and what the Future will Bring
About Matthew:Matthew Alexander is an expert in capital markets, investment banking, corporate strategy and principal investing, with 22 years of experience in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia.
Topic: SEBA Bank and our vision of tokenization, liquidity and what the future will bring Matthew Alexand
Matthew has held senior leadership positions in mergers & acquisitions and principal investment at several major global banks. Most recently Matthew has focused on shaping digital banking strategy and managing strategic digital banking investments for one of Switzerlandʼs largest private banks. He earned an honours degree in Finance & Law from Deakin University Melbourne.
For more information about SEBA Bank, please visit seba.swiss
Topic: Investments in Security-Tokens on an Institutional Investors’ Level, Regulatory Requirements and Similarities compared to other Structured Securities. About Maximilian: Maximilian Portenlänger is Head of Securitisation at von der Heydt Group and is Chair of the Securitisation Task Force at LuxCMA.
Topic: Investments in Security Tokens on an Institutional Investors Level Maximilian Portenlanger
He is committed to the application of disruptive technologies in the financial sector, focusing on blockchain technology and the tokenization of assets.
Maximilian Portenlänger holds a Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Management & Technology from the Technical University of Munich.
DigiShares is proud to announce its partnership with Afri-x.com to deliver the power of tokenization to Africa. DigiShares has licensed its tokenization platform to Afri-X under a white-label business arrangement.
Commenting on the launch of the Afri-x.com platform, Tsolo Makara, CEO said, “It’s a proud moment for us as Afri-x.com as this signals the moment when everyday people can have a legitimate seat at the table of opportunity in Africa. Prime opportunities have traditionally been out of reach for the majority but that changes today through the power of tokenization. We are excited about the road ahead.”
The platform is going live with raise opportunities in property, logistics, beverages as well as biomass production. These raises represent an initial $ 80 million ( ZAR 1.1 billion) requirement with a further pipeline of $ 200 million (ZAR 2.8 billion) due to be announced in 90 days. The excitement about this moment lies in the fact that participation in these opportunities starts from as little as $ 4 (ZAR 60) per token. For project and company owners, this represents an excellent additional source of funding while significantly reducing barriers to entry for investors.
The size of the investment opportunity in Africa has never been in doubt. What has traditionally driven reluctance has been the real and perceived risks in investing in Africa. Blockchain technology together with smart contract innovation go a long way to mitigate that risk for local and international investors all for a fraction of the cost.
Claus Skaaning, CEO of DigiShares states, “This is exactly why blockchain was invented and why it adds a lot of value. Together with Afri-X we are able to fractionalize investments into attractive opportunities and assets that are not normally available to small investors. This enables us to democratize the access to investments and to create equal opportunity for small investors to diversify and protect their funds. We look forward to launch the projects with Afri-X”.
About Afri-X
Afri-X sits at the intersection between transformational businesses and other entities needing growth capital and Investors who can participate by buying from as little as 1 token.
By positioning Afri-X as the premier tokenization platform in Sub-Saharan Africa, the opportunity exists to deliver significant value to all stakeholders while leaving a lasting positive impact in the territories that the platform operates in.
We are excited to announce that we have opened office in the US to put more focus on our US market efforts. The office is based in NYC and we have hired the first employee to be solely focused on the US markets.
Currently most DigiShares clients are based in the US and most incoming leads are also US-based. From a regulatory perspective, the US is also for several reasons a simpler and easier jurisdiction to tokenize out of rather than Europe.
If you are based in the US and interested in tokenization, please come to us with your request. We are constantly on the lookout for white-label partners in the US interested to tokenize real estate and other types of assets.
As a reminder, DigiShares provides a market-leading white-label platform for tokenization that digitizes and automates processes related to financing, corporate management, and trading. It is a multi-project platform with 3 levels of access, for white-label platform administrators, project administrators and investors.
Asset managers, fund managers, and real estate developers use the platform in order to automate processes and save administrative cost, to fractionalize and reach new types of investors, and to provide liquidity to their investors where there was none before.
First US Employee
We are happy to announce that Gabriel Sadoun will be joining us to support our US Business Development. He is a Franco-American based in NYC with 3 years of investment banking experience.
As Gabriel explains it in his own words:
“After being exposed to private market capital raising and transactions for a few years, it seemed quite clear to me that the sector was ripe for disruption. I became interested in learning about ways in which private market investing could become more accessible, less expensive and time consuming, and offer more liquidity. This naturally led me to discover the benefits of blockchain technology and security tokenization. The more I read about it, the more I could see how it could bring massive innovation to private markets.”
“When I made it my goal to join a pioneer in security tokenization, DigiShares was one of the first names on my radar. They are clearly one of the very few real estate / real assets security tokenization software specialists in the world. I consider myself very lucky to be joining such an exciting company and field at an early stage.”
“The US is the world’s largest financial market and the epicenter of innovation, which is why I’m convinced of DigiShares’ huge potential to grow here. There are over 13M accredited investor households in the US, many of which are having most of their wealth tied to public capital markets and/or a very small number of real estate properties. DigiShares’ software has the potential to help them access diversified private market opportunities, by enabling asset managers and crowdfunding platforms to lower minimum investment requirements and helping investors access liquidity. Hopefully, in the next few years, the regulatory environment will evolve to broaden this opportunity to the whole population. That’s the future I’m excited about and I look forward to working towards it with DigiShares and their partners.”
If you are interested in a consultation or to learn more, reach out to Gabriel at: [email protected]
We are excited to announce that the Growing Cities Podcast can be found here. Claus Skaaning, CEO of DigiShares, introduces the concepts of blockchain and tokenization and explains the underlying ideas and value propositions of these concepts.
Claus further introduces how these new technologies provide value for real estate developers in order to digitize and automate their processes, reach new types of investors, and create new levels of liquidity. Finally, Claus speaks about the real use cases from DigiShares’ own catalog of clients.
Crypto Week
Crypto Week was created to contribute to the development of the underground economy in Brazil and foster investment and new business market. Crypto Week is the largest crypto event in South America.
Claus will be participating in a panel discussion on the topic of tokenization, the current market situation and future visions. Other participants include:
Christian Platzer from Black Manta
Mohammed Mahfoud from DECA4
Jorge Sebastiao from Global Blockchain Organization
Thousands of people interested in the cryptocurrency ecosystem will be gathered to expand and present the vast opportunities of this new and promising market. The event can be found here.
FinovateSpring 2021 Demonstration
We are proud to announce that DigiShares will be presenting its Multi-STO platform at FinovateSpring on May 10th 2021. Our CEO participated in a 25 in 5 Q&A session with David Penn that will be played off at the event. It is a session with fast questions and answers to better get to know DigiShares and its background.
Finovate is known for spotlighting new fintech innovations from seed-stage startups to established leaders. And for FinovateSpring 2021, this will happen virtually.
Hand-selected companies demo — not just pitch — their services and solutions for the financial industry in 8 minutes. That way, attendees can see how the tech works and if it’s the right fit for their organizations.
After each demo session, join the demo speakers for live Q&A and chat moderated by Finovate. The event can be accessed here.
Growing Cities Podcast
In addition our CEO will be participating in the Muse award-winning Growing Cities Podcast hosted by Viviana M. Addo and featuring key stakeholders from cities like Cali, Bogota, Honolulu, and New York discussing ideas on how to sustainably grow a city. From public servants to scholastic professors, Growing Cities brings together minds and ideas and gives them a uniquely branded soapbox to reach thousands of English and Spanish-speaking listeners (the podcast is broadcast in both Spanish and English).
The topic of this podcast will be tokenization and how it brings value to real estate.
It is set to be recorded next week and posted shortly after, where over 5000 listeners will be able to listen to the conversation.
DigiShares and Tangany enters into a partnership such that DigiShares can offer Tangany’s white-label custody solution to its customers.
DigiShares provides a leading white-label tokenization solution for real estate and other assets that is offered to real estate developers and asset managers in order to digitize and automate their processes related to financing, corporate management, and trading of their assets. As part of the process, DigiShares’ white-label partners will issue security tokens backed by the underlying assets. These security tokens can now be kept in safe custody with Tangany.
Tangany is a German crypto custodian whose service has been used by corporates and institutions for various use cases as a white-label solution since 2018. This mainly focuses on tokenization projects, institutional investors and asset managers such as crypto services. The company is preliminary regulated as a German crypto custodian under § 64y KwG (German Banking Act). The Custody Suite, which is used by more than 25 clients, offers highly flexible solutions for different business cases. Be it for the safekeeping of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or for the issuance of security tokens.
The benefit of Tangany’s solution is obvious for Claus Skaaning, CEO of DigiShares A/S: “Tangany is among the European market-leaders for custody of tokenized assets. So, we are very happy to announce this collaboration and are looking forward to many joint tokenization projects.”
Martin Kreitmair, Managing Director of Tangany GmbH, adds: “Tokenization is one of our target markets. It’s great to work close with Mr. Skaaning and his team and to provide our tech solution for their projects. We view DigiShares as one of the leading providers of white-label tokenization platforms.”
DigiShares aims to launch the first project on Tangany’s custody platform within the next few weeks.
About Tangany GmbH
Tangany is a white label custodian for digital assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Security Tokens. This service has been offered since 2018 at the highest technical level and always in compliance with the regulation. Tangany specializes in finance, tokenization, and crypto markets. The product is being used by more than 25 clients from the named sectors. The company was recently awarded the prestigious FinTech Germany Award 2020.
DigiShares, a leading provider of white-label tokenization solutions for real assets has partnered with BAHGS Fund, a blockchain-based marketplace that seeks to fractionalize ownership for affordable residential real estate in the US.
As part of their cooperation, a white-label platform for tokenization of real estate will be launched.
This will allow BAHGS Fund to list residential and mixed-use properties on the DigiShares platform that will provide investors early liquidity options through the issuance of asset-backed digital securities.
The new partnership aims to create a bridge between traditional financial players and the emerging fintech sector by using the strength and expertise of financial investors and the creativity of tokenization technology.
This will also be the first public Security Token Offering (STO) backed by affordable residential real estate at this scale, with an initial fundraising goal of $11,880,000 but with many subsequent offerings planned under the terms of the white-label partnership.
Today, the global real estate market is worth $228 trillion, but only 7% of that is available for retail investment. By using distributed ledger technology, investors can reduce their initial investment cost and diversify their capital into multiple projects.
Edward Mason, BAHGS CEO, says, “we are excited about this partnership. We view DigiShares as one of the leaders in real estate tokenization and expect to tokenize a number of exciting real estate opportunities on their platform”.
Claus Skaaning, DigiShares CEO, says, “we are excited to partner with BAHGS in this underserved part of the US real estate market. We believe that tokenization technology will be very helpful in bringing equal opportunity and liquidity to the real estate markets”.
BAHGS Fund, founded in April 2020, is a blockchain-based marketplace that leverages tokenization technology to fractionalize ownership of real estate. By investing through BAHGS Fund’s platform, small investors as well as major institutional companies can invest in affordable residential real estate as the platform incentivizes capital gains investments with a social impact.
Their real estate is usually located in the so-called Qualified Opportunity Zones which are underserved communities across America’s rural and urban areas.
BAHGS Coin offers fractional ownership of asset-back investments while providing people with affordable, sustainable and green homes. The partnership makes it possible to accept 10,000 investors into a real estate project instead of 10 or 100, while also giving them the ability to trade digital assets peer-to-peer.
Over the next year we will offer $237M of affordable shipping container homes, as well as other projects backed by real estate, profit sharing agreements and other real world assets.
