About our Founder: Aaron Tsai, Chief Capitalist

Experience is the best teacher. This can be said for virtually all aspects of life, and it is especially true in the world of entrepreneurship. True entrepreneurs know the value of experience — even failures can contribute to bigger successes in the future. Each stumbling block, each hurdle, can be a stepping stone to better skills, better capabilities, and better decision-making processes on the way to the top.

Aaron Tsai (蔡逸群), Founder and Chief Capitalist at MAS Capital (名资) and MASEx (名交所), is no stranger to entrepreneurial ventures and experiences. While he is known to have pioneered some innovative platforms for investing in securities today, it’s perhaps more interesting to learn about his journey — failures and challenges included — since he started in the technology scene in the early 1990s.

Lessons learned from dot-com boom and bust

Aaron attended the NYU Leonard N. Stern School of Business from 1988 to 1990, and it was during the dot-com boom when he entered the tech scene by launching two companies in Silicon Valley: American Multimedia, Inc., and Multi Access Systems, Inc. or “MAS”. Aaron also acquired notebook computer company ACOM through reverse-merger via Aimex International Corp., a public shell company.

There were several innovations here that were ahead of their time. MAS was built as a TV-based operating system designed to compete with PC-based OSes like Microsoft Windows — analogous to today’s AppleTV or Android TV boxes.

ACOM went bankrupt during an IPO attempt, however as with many dotcom companies, American Multimedia and MAS also failed.

Aaron’s experience with innovating and with acquisitions through shell companies led him to his next set of ventures, notably as a successful Wall Street investment banker. He launched MAS Capital, Inc. as a holdings company, which operated MAS Capital Securities, Inc., a SEC-registered security broker and dealer.

Interestingly, Aaron’s first Nasdaq IPO success came after the dotcom bubble burst, when the Nasdaq Composite Index crashed from a high of 5408 to a low of 1400s. In June 2002, he completed a US$10.5 million IPO for BioDelivery Sciences (Nasdaq: BDSI), which merged with MAS Acquisition XXII Corp., a public shell company that Aaron created. This was done by securing an IPO underwriter and participating in IPO roadshows, while the company was pre-revenue with only patent rights to a new drug delivery technology.

Thus, Aaron had mastered the art and science of establishing public shell companies and taking private companies public through this structure — 101 public shell companies in total, earning him the moniker “King of Shells”.

These profound insights into securities encouraged Aaron Tsai to found MAS Capital Group, Inc. as a financial advisory business, managed by a team of financial professionals in Asia.

The years 2017 and 2018 had been a turning point for entire industries, as digital token offerings were bringing a lot of value to businesses crowdfunding for their capital. Billions of dollars worth in digital currency were invested into Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) during this time, although there was a gap in terms of how investors did due diligence on businesses raising capital — and vice versa.

Thus, further innovation was necessary, and it was in August 2018 when Aaron formed MASEx, a global Security Token exchange for secondary trading of Security Token Offerings (STOs), with a registered representative office in Taipei.

Regulatory compliance is the main challenge of STOs, which are subject to due diligence and regulatory checks. This assures investors and regulators of the quality of the companies and assets being listed in the exchanges.

At a keynote speech at the Security Token Summit in Los Angeles in April 2019, Aaron called for an urgent decentralization and regulation of STOs:

“We are going through a seismic shift that extends across the entire financial industry. This will disrupt the existing oligopoly of financial institutions in banking, securities and fund management sectors. Regulators must rise to the occasion.”

He has also stressed how this would ring about a geographic shift in financial power:

“As we enter a new decade, do not be surprised to see the largest STO exchange in the world based in Asia or China.”

MASEx has since gone live in November 2019, and Aaron Tsai aims to grow the financial market and STO ecosystems by engaging emerging economies through MASEx’s AI-driven decentralized financial platform — thus enabling more participation from the unbanked and underbanked populations.

MASEx continues to innovate by using artificial intelligence in its decentralized universal exchange for securities, commodities, foreign exchange, and other digital assets. To further its aim to innovate the securities market, MASEx recently acquired TTChain to lead and empower a next generation decentralized exchange with lightning digital asset transfers, including assets such as BTC and USDT.

Learn more about MASEx

MAS Capital Universal Exchange (MASEx) is a global STO exchange. We aim to become the leading security token exchange by, using AI and blockchain technology to form a decentralized exchange to trade securities, commodities, FOREX and digital assets on a single or a universal trading platform.

• Website: https://masex.io