Stellerro: Underwriting Digital Securities

Steering in the Hybrid World of Capital Markets and Digital Securities

Elad Kofman
Stellerro
5 min readJan 9, 2019

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These days, Blockchain and cryptocurrency startups, who have raised millions of dollars via “Utility” tokenized crowd-funding means, are reducing resources and lining up to rescue their capital, as they watch things aren’t going as anticipated. For others though, the ICO phase ended successfully, and as some might say, exceeded their expectations.

Nothing new under the sun

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

A phrase adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes. We see this come to life in everything we do these days: from war to religious disputes, to financial crises, it seems that we have seen it all before.

In 509 BC

Publicani was the earliest form of a company or group of people, which issued Public Shares on behalf of the Roman Legions. The Publicani were public contractors, in which role they often supplied the Roman legions and military, managed the collection of port duties and oversaw public building projects. In addition, they served as Tax collectors for the Republic (and later the Roman Empire), bidding on contracts (from the Senate in Rome) for the collection of various types of taxes. The Publicani were usually of the class of equities.

Over 2100 years later, the 1st known IPO concept emerged — The Dutch East India Company in 1653.

In 1969

The world held its breath for ARPANET, the world’s first global Internet infrastructure and an early form of a packet-switching network. (ARPANET were the first to implement the Centralized TCP/IP Infrastructure).

Within only 30 years, the first of its kind “Internet-IPO” was launched and revolutionized the world (for better or worse) with America Online (AOL).

With technology and financial techniques evolving drastically over the last century, we have witnessed a huge shift in various aspects of finance processing, such as payments, investments, data storage and types of currency; new positions have been created in the finance ecosystem and roles such as underwriters have begun to take center stage.

In 2000

The dot-com bubble (also known as the dot-com boom, the tech bubble, and the Internet bubble) was a historic economic bubble and period of excessive speculation that occurred roughly from 1995 up to 2000, a period of extreme growth in the usage and adaptation of the Internet. This soon led to the first case of Ethical-Bankruptcy publicly exposed in October 2001, in the form of what we now know as the Enron scandal/Regulatory No-man’s land 1.0 crisis.

The NASDAQ Composite index spiked in the late 1990s and then fell sharply as a result of the dot-com bubble.

In 2008

The 2000 major events were soon followed by another Ethical-Bankruptcy peak of the financial bohemians in 2008The Lehman Brothers case & The Sub-Prime crisis. Showing the world there is still much to learn on our Capital markets financiers, and essentially entering in regulatory No-man’s land 1.1.

Crude Oil Collosalic collapse followed by the 2008 economic crisis

In 2009

The first ever decentralized digital currency- Bitcoin was born. Bitcoin enables instant payments to anyone based on a Blockchain infrastructure, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: transaction management and money issuance are carried out collectively by the network.

As the Genesis Block was mined, a new financial Era has arrived.

In 2015

The year of the great “Internet-ICO” Experiment kickoff (Followed by Ethereum’s Mainnet launch), brought to light that the concept of Transferring “Online Digital Currency” was surely real but wasn’t the only usage of a Distributed ledger. Using Smart-Contracts via decentralized Applications (“Dapps”) one can digitally facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a two-sided obligation. Although the first beneficiaries were tech savvies and early adopters, it was soon used by entrepreneurs to raise capital. this started to get significant attention from the Global relevant regulators only by the summer of 2017.

2017 proved, once again, that nothing is new under the sun: the ethical-bankruptcy peak of the ICO ecosystem (regulatory no man's land 2.0) did cost investors millions in losses and by early 2018, regulators were forced to join the game.

Cryptocurrencies Total Market Capitalization Chart

During 2018, The ICO “Experiment” ended with minor collateral damage compared to our global economic fortune of the capital markets (pensions, insurances, funds), and has taught us so much on navigating these rough seas.

In 2019

The financial bohemians are stepping back in, with the threat of what just might be our life-savings being gambled away once again. Will this be the rise of regulatory no man's land 2.1? We think not.

2019 forecasts the next imminent wave. In the face of DSO’s (Digital Securities Offerings), with our collective financial experience and Business Intelligence technologies, we know how to learn from the past and, as we all know, the regulators might be late once again. We have learned from history which is doomed to repeat itself. Now we master what is to come.

We are Stellerro.

Stella = STAR ・ Oro = GOLD

The 1st Technological Underwriter & Financial Distributor of its kind, spearheading a disruptive umbrella for the emerging Digital Securities industry, ensuring companies meet the right compliance conditions of numerous regulated jurisdictions.

Stellerro provides cutting-edge Blockchain technologies including Smart contracts issuance, KYC & AML, Cyber-security Audit, Investors Onboarding dashboards, innovative Tokenomics models and Decision enhancement protocols.

Based on our proprietary AI & predictive analytics arsenal we outperform standard benchmarks and provide professional financial distribution in investment & asset management, prime brokerage, and underwriting for asset-backed digital securities.

We stand at the threshold between traditional capital markets and the innovative world of Digital Securities backed by Blockchain technologies. Stellerro has aligned with top global financial institutions and investment funds as a dedicated partner to enhance the integration of both ecosystems.

If you’re an asset owner, entrepreneur or a startup, Stellerro is your brain trust for data and knowledge, Your Underwriter and Financial Distributor.
We will help you with everything you need in order to navigate this groundbreaking and hybrid industry.

Elad Kofman | Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer | Elad@Stellerro.com
For Business Inquiries: Info@Stellerro.com

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