Tag Archives: overstock.com

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What’s Next? A Blockchain-Powered ATS for Equities

“What’s Next? Well, for those familiar with Patrick Byrne, the controversial and innovative founder of Overstock.com, one of the first online retailers to embrace the use of bitcoins, it should not be a surprise that Overstock’s chief honcho would ‘get the joke’ and realize its all about the underlying technology that powers cryptocurrency applications, known as distributed ledger. While bitcoin currency continues to encounter challenges in terms of mass embracement, the real grease that makes the makes the wheels turn is under the hood. With that, Overstock subsidiary “T0” (T-zero) is taking a page from both the industry consortium formed by R3 and the Senahill-backed Symbiont –both of which target institutional capital markets usage–and aiming it’s own sights on retail investors by setting to launch an equities-centric Alternative Trading System aka ATS powered by their own blockchain formula.

A distributed ledger is a consensus of replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data geographically spread across multiple sites, countries, and/or institutions.
A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger, comprised of unchangable, digitally recorded data in packages called blocks.
Rob Daly of MarketsMedia (not related to MarketsMuse) provides the scoop..

Online retailer Overstock.com expects trading to begin on its blockchain-based alternative trading system before the end of the year, according to company officials.

The ATS will be operated by Overstock.com subsidiary TO as part of the company’s Medici Project, and it will only handle trades in the company stock, at least at first. So while it’s not an immediate competitive threat to the existing field of 13 U.S. stock exchanges plus several dozen ATSs, the initiative will be closely watched as a gauge of the potential of distributed-ledger technology in capital markets.

The ATS will write completed trades to its blockchain instead of routing them to the National Securities Clearing Corp., a subsidiary of Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., for clearing.

Overstock.com plans to prime the liquidity on the ATS through a new issue of corporate shares to existing shareholders the day before trading commences on the new trading venue.

judd bagley blockchain ATS
Judd Bagley

T0 officials plan to formally announce its partnership with a broker-dealer on Sept. 12. “For those who want to trade on the ATS, they will have to create an account with the broker-dealer,” said Overstock’s man-in-charge Judd Bagley, who declined to name the brokerage firm.

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Investors will be able to select from multiple “very vanilla” order types, which are still in development, he added. T0 may use a so-called maker-taker rebate model to encourage liquidity, but officials have not made a final decision.

The new trading venue is a mix of internally developed technology and the technology T0 acquired with its purchase of order-routing firm SpeedRoute in October 2015. T0 built its matching engine internally as well as the necessary interfaces to the rest of the U.S. equity marketplace.

The company, in conjunction with Bay-area consultancy PeerNova, also developed a proprietary blockchain architecture for the ATS instead of using Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Ripple.

To continue reading the story from MarketsMedia, please click here

#WhatsNext: The First Crypto Bond Issuance aka Bitcoin Bond

#WhatsNext? wonders the MarketsMuse.com editors and Overstock’s Patrick Byrne does not fail to surprise with another announcement that could disrupt the capital markets. As a follow-on to a $500mil stock offering reported here on April 29, now Byrne is pitching an offering that he hopes to be the first issuance of a crypto bond aka bitcoin bond using crypto technology.

Per extract below from BrokerDealer.com….

Last Autumn, the firm acquired a 25% stake in alternative trading system (ATS) PRO Securities as part of a long-term ambition to use the core blockchain technology to create a cryptosecurity trading system, in which computer algorithms are used to trade virtual stocks issued by public companies.
The company is now scouting institutional investor interest in its first digital bond issues, which is powered by Overstock.com’s TØ.com technology – a name that refers to the fact that trades on the system securely settle the same day, as opposed to the T+3 convention on Wall Street. – See more at BrokerDealer.com

Byrne’s Bitcoin Exchange Files $500 Million Offering of Virtual Shares

MarketsMuse.com Tech Talk update profiles the latest development regarding Overstock.com’s CEO Patrick Byrne  plan for a cryptosecurity trading system “for brokerdealers” only and akin to the array of ECNs and ATS platforms that Fintech aficionados and broker-dealers  are already accustomed to.

The headline:

Overstock looks to issue Bitcoin-style stocks via new trading system; may issue up to $500 million in stock through blockchain-style technology

Overstock, the online retailer building a crypto-securities exchange, has revealed that it may issue up to $500 million in stock through blockchain-style technology.

Last year Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne hired developers and lawyers in an effort to create a platform – dubbed ‘Medici’ – that could use the core blockchain technology to create a cryptosecurity trading system, in which computer algorithms are used to trade virtual stocks issued by public companies.

The firm has now filed a prospectus related to the sale of securities with the Securities and Exchange Commission, adding: “We may decide to offer any of the securities described in this prospectus as digital securities, meaning the securities will be uncertificated securities, the ownership and transfer of which are recorded on a cryptographically-secured distributed ledger system using technology similar to (or the same as) the distributed ledger technology used for trading digital currencies.”

The prospectus says that these digital securities would not be traded on any existing exchange but on a specific system registered with the SEC as an ATS open only to subscribers that agree to trade exclusively through vetted broker dealers.

For the full story from Finextra.com, please click here