The Digital Asset Review
JULY 9, 2019

"Spotify and Slack both cut Wall Street out of their public offerings, keeping the money in Silicon Valley. And Wall Street is starting to worry.

'If you’re sticking your head in the sand on this, you’re toast,' says one senior investment banker who specializes in equity underwritings. Up until recently, Wall Street has made scads of money on Silicon Valley’s disruptions—but now one of its own business models is in the crosshairs. "



"According to local reports from mainstream media outlets such as Chosun, the decision of SK to invest in the crypto fund of ConsenSys indicates a high level of interest towards crypto by Chey Tae-won, the billionaire chairman of SK Corporation.

Chosun reported that Chey, the seventh wealthiest individual in South Korea, recently attended the SparkLabs Demo Day 2019 and said that he is interested in blockchain technology and the tokenized economy."



“One of the unique characteristics of Reg CF is that the statute created a new type of entity as an intermediary. “Funding Portals” are FINRA regulated online platforms where companies may pitch their business to investors.

In May, the 3rd anniversary of the exemption kicking in, CI noted that 44 Funding Portals were in operation and 9 portals had exited the space. A single platform had been suspended. During the past three years ...$200 million has been funded for a wide variety of firms. "


"The biggest difference between an IPO and a Direct Listing is that there is no “o” — that is, there is no offering from the company selling its stock to public investors. Besides this and a few other substantive differences that I’ll cover, the differences between IPOs and Direct Listings mainly boil down to the order of operations. The activities in both processes are actually rather similar — registration, investor education, trading, and so on — differing mainly in what happens when, and in some cases, how.

There is also no formal book-building roadshow in a Direct Listing. In a traditional IPO, the company going public literally goes “on the road” with their underwriter (the investment bank) over an intense two-week period for back-to-back, intimate meetings with potential investors. They do this is not just to market their company story, but to enable the management team to build relationships with investors — typically, large institutional investors..."


"The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) published last Friday an e-Tax draft guide for treatment on what it calls the “Digital Payment Tokens,” seeking to exempt any entity dealing with such digital assets from GST liabilities.

If the draft guide passes into legislation, starting from Jan. 1, 2020, the following changes will take effect to 'better reflect the characteristics of digital payment tokens:' "



"Utilizing Tezos, a self-amending blockchain and smart contracts platform will encourage BTG Pactual and Dalma Capital to enhance their digitization efforts, by transacting in digital assets.

'While the bank remains protocol and technology agnostic, and will continue to utilize the Ethereum protocol, we see Tezos as a global player with a robust blockchain for asset tokenization' said Andre Portilho, a BTG partner who heads the STO initiative. "



“Artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain are two of the most-talked-about technologies of the past 10 years, and their evolution has led to significant and promising innovations. The idea of combining them is particularly intriguing.

The profit potential for these two technologies is forecast to be in the billions for the foreseeable future. Gartner, a global technology research firm, estimates that the business value created by AI will near $3.9 trillion in 2022, while some anticipate the blockchain market will be worth roughly $23 billion by 2023. "