Rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing Start-up and Com­pa­ny Financing

In our lat­est Fire­side Chat on June 24, 2020, Black Man­ta Cap­i­tal Part­ners (BMCP) host­ed an engag­ing ses­sion on ‘How Secu­ri­ty Tokens are Rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing Start-up and Com­pa­ny Financ­ing’. 

Our part­ner, Alexan­der Rap­atz, sat down with Sor­cha Mul­li­gan of The SME Chain, Flo­ri­an Wim­mer of Block­pit GmbH, Toby Lewis of Novum Insights, Robert Haas­trup-Tim­mi of Blockchain Com­pa­ny and Juer­gen Hoe­barth of Tokeni­sa­tion Limited.

Here are some key take-aways from the session:

1. Edu­ca­tion­al phase of dig­i­tal assets

Whilst scep­ti­cal of cryp­to assets, tra­di­tion­al finan­cial insti­tu­tions are enthused by the prospect of dig­i­tal assets. How­ev­er, more edu­ca­tion is need­ed to build actu­al activ­i­ty lev­el and an even­tu­al sec­ondary market.

Steeped in com­pli­ance exper­tise, Toby point­ed out that tra­di­tion­al play­ers includ­ing Pan­tera Cap­i­tal and Union Square are trad­ing unreg­u­lat­ed tokens owing to the lack of clear reg­u­la­tions. He remains opti­mistic that a flood­gate of activ­i­ty will fol­low from enhanced legal certainty.

2. Ways to build trust

To enhance the per­cep­tion of legit­i­ma­cy in dig­i­tal assets, our speak­ers encour­aged col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er play­ers. For instance, Robert’s Blockchain Com­pa­ny is part­ner­ing with glob­al finan­cial con­sul­tan­cy Duff & Phelps with KYC and AML onboard­ing pro­ce­dures. Sor­cha agreed that this will go a long way in stim­u­lat­ing con­fi­dence amongst insti­tu­tion­al investors in dig­i­tal assets.

Flo­ri­an added that a port­fo­lio of reg­u­lat­ed assets is crit­i­cal to fos­ter trust amongst mul­ti­ple types of investors. The back­ing of reg­u­la­tors will cement the rep­u­ta­tion of dig­i­tal assets as a great instru­ment to con­verge both cryp­to enthu­si­asts, pri­vate investors and insti­tu­tion­al investors who are warm­ing to the idea of asset sharing.

3. Nec­es­sary pain points persist

Giv­en that the par­a­digm of util­i­ty and secu­ri­ty token remains rel­a­tive­ly new, work­ing with will­ing reg­u­la­tors remains a time-con­sum­ing and cost­ly affair.

Reflect­ing on his recent expe­ri­ence with the France’s mar­ket reg­u­la­tor AMF, Robert revealed that patience was essen­tial even when deal­ing with the first G7 coun­try with a reg­u­lat­ed frame­work for an Ini­tial Coin Offer­ing (ICO). Flo­ri­an con­curred that he ini­tial­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed the time required for reg­u­la­to­ry approval from the sup­port­ive Aus­tri­an legal framework.