blockimmo’s digital shares are now live — tokenisation of private equity for early investors
Zug, 16th of May 2019 — The Zug-based blockchain company blockimmo, a platform for real estate tokenisation and technology provider for asset tokenisation, has successfully completed its first financing seed round with family, friends and selected early-stage investors. Unique in this way, investors received their shares in the company in the form of digital assets (tokens) instead of regular company shares.
In preparation for the seed money round, blockimmo tokenized 20 percent of its equity at the end of last year. The security token — called IMMO — is synchronized with a global certificate, which holds the capital in the form of participation certificates. The global certificate is held securely by Bank Frick. Details such as the transfer of ownership are contained in the terms of the prospectus and the token terms.
Raphael Haldner, Director of Funds & Products at Bank Frick explains: “As specialists in the creation of tailor-made fund and capital market products, we have been working for a long time to integrate the potential of the blockchain into our solutions in the best possible way. In particular, we allocate great importance to the tokenisation of financial instruments in the future and are convinced that a significant increase in efficiency is possible compared to traditional securitisation — consequently, we are very pleased to be able to support blockimmo in this innovation”
Tradable 24 hours after distribution
In general private equity and with that start-up shares are highly illiquid investments. For example it took the transportation network company “Uber” ten years from the initial investments to becoming tradable at an exchange. In contrast to that the IMMO tokens where tradable within 24 hours after their distribution to the shareholders. IMMO tokens are traded on STX.SWISS, the completely decentralized exchange for digital assets. All legal functions of the participation certificates are represented in the smart contract. The digital register is thus located on the public Ethereum blockchain and is automatically updated with each paperless transfer.
“Our technology can be applied to any asset class, as we demonstrate once more by tokenizing our own company shares” said Bastiaan Don, Founder and Managing Director of blockimmo. “The fact that our start-up shares are instantly tradable at a decentralized secondary market and there is liquidity shows that the tremendous potential of the underlying technology is coming to life, an executed use-case of decentralized finance at its finest.”
The blockimmo solution has aroused the interest of various parties in the real estate market. Now, the solution has also been well received by other asset markets such as private equity and art. Within the tokenization solution, potential investors must go through a simple on-boarding process where their identity and contribution amount are linked to their wallet to enforce KYC/AML compliance (blockID). The first exciting projects and strategic partnerships will be announced in the near future.
About blockimmo
blockimmo is a blockchain powered startup on the verge of becoming the go to marketplace for asset tokenization. The regulatory compliant ecosystem enables fractional investments and ownership. Assets are officially and legally represented as security tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. blockimmo partners with financial institutions and other strategic partners in different countries to enable and grow the cross-border market. Operating out of Switzerland, blockimmo is focused on bringing asset tokenization to the masses, ultimately resulting in a global asset market far more efficient than the any traditional market today. — blockimmo.ch
