Replace Wall Street? Ha Ha, Ho Ho......are you crazy? Oh wait, it might already be happening and online retailer Overstock is locked and loaded to make that happen. Overstock is doing an ICO (initial coin offering) dubbed....tZERO.....which will pave the way for Overstock to set up a cryptocurrency exchange, or in better terms, tokenize Wall Street. Which means (again) recreate Wall Street on the blockchain. By the way, Overstock has had a working model of this for a couple of years now. AND, their ICO has just passed $100M in capital raise. Patrick Byrne, Overstock's CEO, is even downplaying the offering by warning tZERO is very risky and only open to accredited investors. But even with the appropriate warning it seems pretty certain that Overstock will reach its goal of raising $250M. So, Wall Street should pay attention and worry the next shoe may drop; Amazon. Just saying.
(Bill Taylor/Managing Editor)
"Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne sat down with Business Insider's Sara Silverstein to discuss the company's ICO — tZERO — passing $100 million, the tokenization of Wall Street, and what people get wrong about blockchain. Following is a transcript of the video.
Silverstein: Anything you can tell me about tZERO? Any new announcements coming out?
Byrne: Well I can announce that we have — we're just putting out the announcement. We've crossed the $100 million mark in our security token offering. So it's now to the public — accredited investors. However, I want to emphasize this is extraordinarily risky — extremely dangerous. The general public should think of coming nowhere close. In fact, most of these ICOs you should stay — get nowhere close to. But ours is very risky — accredited investors only.
Even if you are accredited, it should be. But we're raising $250 million, finishing up some acquisitions, and building an ecosystem that we intend to challenge Wall Street with. Whether we can pull it off or not, that's — I just can't emphasize enough — it's really risky and make your own decision.
Silverstein: And what is tZERO? Can you explain that?
Byrne: tZERO is the application of blockchain to capital markets or Wall Street. We believe we can, you know, recreate Wall Street on the blockchain. Really eliminate a lot of opportunities for mischief around here. So that's tZERO. And it's been in business — we've been at it a few years. I think we have a good head start on most people.
Silverstein: So you can only sell an asset once?
Byrne: You can only sell an asset once.
Silverstein: Which makes sense —
Byrne: And you're selling the asset. You're not selling someone's claim, to someone's claim, to someone's claim, to someone else who owns the asset..."