Becoming Revolution

Lofoten Islands. Photo by John O’Nolan on Unsplash

Author
Amit Pradhan, President SVBS.

Getting started
Silicon Valley Blockchain Society (SVBS) began its journey as a small network of aligned investors and blockchain experts (and well-wishers), whose common interest in a practical and sustainable future of decentralization set the foundation for the Company it is today. Our mission from day 1 was to ‘Fund the Revolution’ and we thoughtfully built the 3 pillars (SVBS Nation, SVBS Ventures and SVBS Capital) to do our small part to achieve this mission — one compliant step after another.

The first pillar we built was the SVBS Nation (Network) — a global, invite-only, member-driven network of Institutional Investors, Angels, Family Offices, Corporate & Venture Capital and Entrepreneurs focused on funding the revolution at the intersection of Blockchain, Fintech, AI, and IoT and the wider Web3 moniker, with a vertical focus on Digital Health, Future of Work, Fintech and Impact. The monthly salons at the global chapters brought together some of the best investors and operators in the space for them to connect directly. Annual events at the WEF, SXSW etc helped the Nation expand and interact with each other, while exploring investments in startups in the network. Covid moved these salon gatherings online, and reduced some of the interactions, but increased attendance and participation.

Building the business
With the second pillar, SVBS Ventures (Portfolio), we started building a portfolio of some of the best companies, founders and teams, solving meaningful challenges using an interplay of frontier technologies like IoT, AI and Blockchain.

And finally, we also started rolling out financial products under the 3rd pillar of SVBS, SVBS Capital (Products) with our partners, enabling Qualified and Institutional Investors to gain exposure to this revolutionary new digital asset class.
Visually, this is what the 3-pillars look like -

At the core though, we always wanted to ensure 2 key aims for our community –
A. Easy, compliant access to all that we do
B. Liquidity.
Both of these are incredibly difficult to achieve in the world of early-stage and digital assets.

DLTx
Enter DLTx (OSE: DLTX) and our own David Johnston (COO of DLTx & Board member of SVBS) –
Late last year, E David Ellington (SVBS Chairman) and I sat down with David Johnston and talked at length about their DLTx journey, their reasons for listing in Norway and what this meant for the future. Here is a summary of that conversation:

David Johnston had been running his crypto focused family office for years, but felt as a private company he didn’t have the tools he needed to create an outsized impact in Web3. So he partnered up with James Haft’s family office and Tim Furey to find a public vehicle. Norway ended up being both a friendly and affordable place to launch the public vehicle, so in April of 2021 they organized a Share Exchange Agreement with an existing listed company in Norway, named Element ASA. They each individually contributed their various crypto tokens / equities / shares in exchange for shares in Element ASA, which they later renamed to DLTx (Distributed Ledger Technologies).

Having a public company really opened access to institutional capital. Soon they were partnering with folks like Genesis to expand their Filecoin operations via institutional level FIL lending. It also gave them the option to acquire Joint Venture partners such as DSM which brought in-house all their engineering talent. Best of all, the Oslo exchange was added to EuroNext in 2021 and thus it opened access for most European investors, large and small, to access the DLTx stock. As a result in only 17 months, the company has grown from the original assets contributed in the Share Exchange Agreement to four operating business units, Bitcoin Mining, DLTx Cloud, Decentralized Wireless and Ventures. Looking at this journey DLTx has been on and with SVBS having a similar opportunity to operate and scale a business which includes rolling in assets, become public and then grow using institutional access to capital, partnering with DLTx became a no brainer.

We talked about our products and the challenges with accessing them; sometimes by status of investors, other times by jurisdiction and other times by the sheer cost and procedural hurdles to make them available at all. All of this was antithetical to those lofty aims of access and liquidity. What David and James Haft (Chairman, DLTx) had achieved with DLTx and their EuroNext listing was admirable AND a wonderful blueprint for what needed to come next for SVBS.

Revolution
A blueprint that was based on a plan that sounded something like this: “Imagine bringing SVBS’ business assets, its portfolio and access to its current and future products into a Norwegian company, whose shares (Ticker likely will be RVLN) are listed on a big stock exchange, so investors can easily buy (democratized access) and sell at any time (liquidity) and represent an easy abstraction of what are otherwise complicated private assets to buy, custody and trade for both the average individual investor and institutional investors. As an aside, I have had a love-affair with Norway that has spanned over 2 decades of my life. More recently though, I have been an intrinsic part of Katapult and sit on the board of the Norwegian Refugee Council. My love, respect and admiration for the Norwegian people, their ethics and their quality of governance is sky-high.

We started the hard work of putting this plan in motion, while continuing to operate core SVBS business and organize Nation events.

1. Transitioning SVBS Inc. into an existing Norwegian listed entity by using an existing entity that DLTx in Norway already owns, called DLTx Ventures.
2. Thinking through the new brand and identity — from the Fund the Revolution mission from the early days, it was now time to just BE ‘Revolution’.
3. DLTx Ventures was renamed Revolution ASA and under the RVLN.one and RVLN.fi domains, we are making the transition to the Revolution brand.
4. Identifying the assets that DLTx would contribute to this new entity (they have an excellent portfolio of mining and infrastructure assets for the team at Revolution to manage. The assets chosen are not just valuable for what they are, but they are also more aligned to the assets SVBS owns, so they are better managed by the Revolution team, from a longer-term standpoint anyways. What this also achieved was an increased Net Value of RVLN by virtue of the combined assets of both SVBS and DLTx.

What comes next
The next steps in this transition will take us through the end of 2022.

1. We’ll complete the transition to Revolution ASA and the RVLN stock ticker by the end of this year. From a brand perspective, we will use Revolution and RVLN interchangeably to refer to Revolution ASA.
2. All our assets and the ones being contributed by DLTx for the management of Revolution to manage (and grow) will be fully owned by RVLN and all the paperwork necessary to make the transition will be completed (and filed, where needed).
3. The entire management team at SVBS will transition to RVLN.
4. All shareholders of SVBS Inc. (Investors, Founders, Management and Employees) will hold RVLN stock in lieu of their SVBS holdings. As an aside, all existing noteholders at SVBS Inc. will have their notes converted to RVLN stock (via SVBS stock).
5. Listed stock: RVLN, by virtue of the transition will be a listed stock on the EuroNext stock exchange.
6. Future IPO: RVLN will be simply publicly listed at this time. In early to mid 2023, RVLN will aim to launch an IPO, where a sizeable raise (to allow the public markets to buy and trade RVLN stock AND for RVLN to create significant dry-powder to operate, grow the network and invest in many more promising assets in the space) will be undertaken.

Network Opportunities
This transition opens up myriad opportunities for our network. At the outset though, here are just a few -

1. Investment into RVLN — a small number of our network investors will be able to invest into RVLN stock at a significant discount over the next 2–3 months. Please get in touch with our team at here if interested.
2. Investment into the IPO — we will allow a first tranche of our existing network investors to deploy capital first, just prior to the IPO.
3. Be a part of RVLN (a) Raising Capital — startups and mid-stage companies looking to raise capital, will be able to go through the same curated investment process run by SVBS (now RVLN) and if selected, will be able to receive investment by contributing assets into RVLN.
4. Be a part of RVLN (b) — Liquidity — RVLN will actively look to bring in currently non-liquid assets that are attractive and high performing from our network and partners and align with the RVLN Investment thesis, in exchange for RVLN shares, thus creating quick liquidity for their owners and in turn, creating additional value within RVLN and as a by-product for the RVLN stock.

Question, comments?
We are always available for a chat. Additionally, both the DLTx and SVBS teams will be covering Revolution ASA at the next SVBS Salon on Sep 22nd at 9am PST. Register here.

Disclaimers
Certain information mentioned in this post contains “forward-looking information”, including, but not limited to the “completion of the transaction”, “a future listing”, “future public offering(s), “future-oriented financial information” and “financial outlook”, under applicable securities laws (collectively referred to herein as forward-looking statements). Except for statements of historical fact, the information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements and includes, but is not limited to, the (i) projected financial performance of the Company; (ii) completion of, and the use of proceeds from, the sale of the products being offered hereunder; (iii) the expected development of the Company’s business, projects, and joint ventures; (iv) execution of the Company’s vision and growth strategy, including with respect to future M&A activity and global growth; (v) sources and availability of third-party financing for the Company’s projects; (vi) completion of the Company’s projects that are currently underway, in development or otherwise under consideration; (vi) renewal of the Company’s current customer, supplier and other material agreements; and (vii) future liquidity, working capital, and capital requirements. Forward-looking statements are provided to allow potential investors the opportunity to understand management’s beliefs and opinions in respect of the future so that they may use such beliefs and opinions as one factor in evaluating an investment.

These statements are not guarantees of future performance and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future performance or result expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Although forward-looking statements contained in this article are based upon what management of the Company believes are reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management’s estimates or opinions should change except as required by applicable securities laws. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.
Also — this is not investment advice. Do your own research.
THE COMPANY DOES NOT INTERVENE, BROKER OR ADVISE ON ANY INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY. YOU MAY INVEST OR CONTACT POTENTIAL INVESTORS AT YOUR SOLE AND ENTIRE RISK AND RESPONSIBILITY.