Month: July 2019

DigiShares, the white-label platform solution for tokenizing securities, has been recently featured in Andrew Roman’s “Masters of Blockchain, Digital Assets, and the New Capital Markets”, one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date books on blockchain and tokenization. This came about, as the company’s CEO, Claus Skaaning, was invited to contribute a chapter about the development of the STO market and its benefits.

Skaaning has also been interviewed by the Crypto twins, whose popular Youtube channel, ValueTokenized, provides educational content to help businesses learn about tokenization. Our CEO has talked about the challenges and benefits of carrying out an STO and how DigiShares can contribute to the new financial infrastructure provided by the blockchain technology. It all comes into the context of the company’s ongoing STO, which is one of the first in Europe to also target retail investors.

“Masters of Blockchain” and DigiShares’ role in the new capital markets

“Masters of Blockchain” is a book written by Andrew Romans, author, CEO, and partner at several venture capital firms, which explores the entire blockchain and tokenization domain, from the rise of cryptocurrencies and token economies to what that means for startups, corporations, or investors. Claus Skaaning, CEO of DigiShares, has been invited to contribute a chapter in this book, where he delves into the development and benefits of security tokens.

“Almost all companies in the STO industry quote the World Economic Forum figure of 10% of the global GDP moving to the blockchain by 2028 ($7.8 trillion), implying that a huge new market is developing. […] We are seeing two trends right now. The first is a massive increase in the number of market entrants providing products and services for the STO industry. The second is a massive growth in blockchain technology being adopted by established financial companies.”

“One major benefit of STOs is clearly the future tradability of the security. […] Forthcoming security token exchanges will make it much easier and less expensive to have your tokenized securities traded. This increased liquidity will surely attract many investors to STOs.”

Skaaning also mentioned how the Danish issuance platform DigiShares is part of this revolution: “In my company, we are focused on one application of blockchain technology – how to represent stocks on the blockchain. Even though it was written long before blockchain, the Danish securities regulation actually supports this quite well. Stock certificates may be digitized. The entire process around share registers, voting, shareholder meetings, etc. may be digitized. […] In practice we are storing an encrypted named stock certificate within each token. Each token represents one share in the company. Tokens will have smart contracts that check against a whitelist of investors to determine whether a given transfer to a new owner is compliant. Such securities can be “passported” into other EU member states and possibly even outside the EU, making Denmark a solid destination for STOs.”

Buy the book here.

Cryptotwins interview DigiShares CEO Claus Skaaning

In their latest video, the two popular Cryptotwins, Xenia and Masha Vyazemskaya, have featured DigiShares. Their Youtube channel, ValueTokenized, is dedicated to getting tokenization industry insights from interviews with professionals in the field, the most recent one being Claus Skaaning. Our CEO talked about the challenges and benefits of carrying out a security token offering in the context of DigiShares’ ongoing STO, which is one of the first in Europe to also target retail investors, and about the company’s goals and plans for the future, as well as its role in the new financial infrastructure. Watch the video here.

DigiShares is partnering with other companies in the industry in order to provide customers with better and more complete solutions. One of these projects, Altvesto, is a legal framework where investors can have shares in both tokenized and non-tokenized versions. Skaaning: “This legal framework is expected to be a step to attract institutional investors to come more easily into the domain of security tokens. We need to build some bridges to the traditional financial world in order to make it easy for them to accept the risk of adopting a new technology”.
DigiShares has also recently entered a partnership with the Finnish company, Empirica, focused on building the AI-based investor community platform, Binvestor, that will be a network for investors and companies seeking funding. DigiShares and Empirica will collaborate on building up the community and DigiShares will be the platform of choice for future STOs launched through Binvestor.

About DigiShares

DigiShares provides a platform for issuance and post-issuance management of tokenized securities. It helps with the initial design of the security token such that it fulfills the requirements of the issuer jurisdiction, using the most popular security token protocols and helping ensure that the token may later be traded on forthcoming security token exchanges. DigiShares is your trusted partner to ensure that your digital shares will be compliant and liquid.

DigiShares is currently conducting its own STO, learn more here.

DigiShares has now completed the first round of their capital raise, a private placement round. The financing round was carried out as an STO (Security Token Offering) through DigiShares’ own issuance and shareholder management platform. An STO is a type of capital raise where shares are issued and offered for sale, as tokens on the blockchain rather than traditional shares.

With the first funding round completed, DigiShares will now launch the second phase of their capital raise, a public offering of approximately EUR 1 M, a small capital raise under EU regulations. Equity in the form of security tokens will be offered for sale.

Investors will receive shares in DigiShares with full voting rights, full rights for dividends, similar to a normal share. It is expected that the shares will be listed on a European security token exchange within 1 year after the sale to provide liquidity for investors. Also, investors will receive early access to participate in forthcoming capital raises on the DigiShares platform.

DigiShares is among the first in Europe to provide a software platform that can be used for investment funds, real estate funds, and later stage startups to raise funding by issuing shares as tokens on the blockchain and offering them for sale. These tokens represent securities and are fully regulated under the issuer’s jurisdiction. Tokens can represent equity, bonds or other types of customized securities with revenue-sharing rights, voting rights, etc. DigiShares helps design the tokens and smart contracts to correctly represent these securities and the platform then manages the entire process related to the registration and verification of investors, distribution and signing of subscriptions forms and shareholder agreements, continuously updated shareholder registers, as well as the distribution of dividends, voting, etc.

DigiShares partners with international exchanges for the listing and trading of security tokens as well as investor networks to help ensure that issuers can sell their tokens and provide investors with future liquidity. DigiShares also partners with legal advisors across many jurisdictions to provide assistance with setting up SPVs, drafting private placement memorandums, prospectus documents, etc.

Compared to traditional forms of capital raises such as private placements, public offerings, and IPOs, an STO is less expensive and more “liquid” since it is easier to reach global investors. The biggest benefit by far is the fact that security tokens are tradeable and will soon be traded on special exchanges in Europe. This means that angel investors putting money in startups will no longer be stuck for 5-8 years but may immediately trade their shares with others. In a similar manner, investors into real estate projects and investment funds may achieve liquidity much sooner than before. For this reason, investors are expected to prefer STOs over traditional forms of capital raise which will in return make it easier for companies to raise capital with an STO – and potentially allow for increased valuations.

The platform is provided under the DigiShares brand, but also increasingly as a white-label solution for companies that want to operate their own issuance platform. This could be STO consultants, legal and financial advisors, equity crowdfunding platforms, etc.

Claus Skaaning, CEO of DigiShares: “The swift completion of our private placement rounds seems to indicate a significant investor interest in the new world of tokenized securities. DigiShares is working with many partners to help bring the ecosystem into place such that companies can raise capital easier and with lower cost – and investors can enjoy much increased liquidity on their investments.”

The STO market is viewed as the “new ICO” and foreseen to become a very large market in the future, for instance by the World Economic Forum which has predicted that securities amounting to 10% of the GDP will be tokenized by 2025 ($12-14 trillion).