BlackBox Labs and Swarm Partner to Unlock Multi-Billion Dollar Tokenization Opportunity in Southeast Asia

BlackBox Labs
Blackbox Labs Blog
Published in
3 min readMar 5, 2019

BlackBox Labs (blackboxlabs.asia) is proud to announce a partnership with Swarm (swarm.fund) with the aim of helping Governments, Enterprises and Investors in the South East Asia region navigate the tokenization process, understand its risks and benefits, and adhere to compliance regulations.

Tokenization allows for the digital representation of ownership in assets such as funds, equity, debt or physical assets like real estate. Ownership is represented by digital securities, sometimes referred to as security tokens. These tokenized securities are issued on a blockchain and are subject to government laws regulating traditional securities i.e. investors requiring the proper KYC/AML verifications to compliantly buy and trade.

Security Tokens have vast potential in South East Asia due to the increasing population of affluent investors who value flexibility and efficiency in cost and wealth management, all of which are offered by Security Token Offerings (STO).

According to an August 2018 report by GIIN, USD 904 million has been deployed in the SEA region by private impact investors (PIIs) and around USD 11.2 billion deployed by Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) since 2007.

SEA’s investing ecosystem has developed significantly over the last decade and STOs will play a huge part in it in the coming years, particularly as the number of digitally savvy investors continues to grow, expected to reach 136 million by 2030.

The challenge for SEA comprises of the overwhelming demand to securitize digital and physical assets, cost barriers as well as the complexity of the tokenization process in terms of Compliance Issuance solutions.

The fundamental combination of technological and business network solutions provided by BlackBox Labs and Swarm will enable Investors, Enterprises, and Governments in SEA to tokenize securities thereby generating superior access and liquidity through STO’s backed by real assets. This creates value for investments as well as customization, flexibility and cost efficiency in asset and wealth management.

“With the right infrastructure, collaborative network and regulatory setups, the potential for a tokenized economy in South East Asia are immense. We are extremely excited to be collaborating with Swarm in bringing forth a revolutionary tokenized economy.”

Glen Liu Zhenquan, CEO of BlackBox Labs

“Swarm’s free tokenization model and open infrastructure were designed to lower barriers and make it easy for local experts to plug in. We’re thrilled to partner with the team at BlackBox Labs as they leverage their expertise and our technology to help unlock the multi-billion dollar opportunity in digital securities in South East Asia.”

Philipp Pieper, Co-Founder & CEO of Swarm

About BlackBox Labs: BlackBox Labs is a technology advisory firm supporting enterprises, GOV bodies and family offices in tokenizing, building & launching new/enhanced business models powered by innovative tech like Blockchain.

About Swarm: Swarm is a non-profit providing open infrastructure for the issuance and trading of digital securities. Asset owners and fund managers can issue security tokens using Swarm’s technology with no fees, facilitating access to fractional ownership in formerly exclusive asset classes like real estate funds and private equity. Swarm empowers investors to invest alongside others, forming a Swarm that collectively meets minimum funding requirements to participate in these investment opportunities, also with no fees. Swarm has created Market Access Protocol, an open source, decentralized system for the safe and compliant purchase and transfer of digital securities within and across blockchains.

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BlackBox Labs
Blackbox Labs Blog

We consult enterprises and deploy commercial models enabled by innovation such as blockchain technology.