Connections. Compliance. Cap Tables.
The Digital Asset Review
MARCH 12, 2019
Crypto in 2019: Kleiner Perkins 5 Focus Areas

"Despite all of the Games of Thrones signs around town, winter is here in crypto-land. After an explosion of altcoins and funding, technical constraints and regulatory angst have taken over the headlines. Still, the frenzy of the past two years set the stage for the next wave of adoption with a steady inflow of talent and new, uniquely compelling use cases of digital assets.

Three themes dominated the space's mindshare in 2018:

  • Protocol gaps exposed, which led to novel approaches
  • Institutional money on the sidelines
  • Burgeoning consumer innovation"

New Security Token Exchange ABE Wants to Bring Back Small-Cap IPOs

"A new security token trading venue is coming out of stealth mode with a novel strategy to help small U.S. companies go public with a minimal compliance burden.

Announced Wednesday, ABE Global plans to launch sometime this summer and aims to list over 100 tokens by the end of the year. Two of its three founders are Wall Street veterans who built trading businesses and sold them to well-known institutions.

One of them, CEO John Pigott, founded a fixed-income marketplace called ValuBond, later known as BondPoint and now a part of Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)."

China is Racing Ahead of the United States on Blockchain

"The grand strategic competition between the United States and China will be won or lost based on who controls the rules and systems that govern 21st-century commerce, communications and security. Washington can no longer ignore that China is way ahead on the core technology that will underpin those systems: blockchain.

Last month, the Trump administration finally issued a broad U.S. plan for the development of artificial intelligence. But there’s no U.S. government strategy at all for blockchain. Meanwhile, the Chinese government’s blockchain effort is already well underway."

UPCOMING EVENTS
NH Token Securities Sidetable
It's All About the Ledger
March 25-26, 2019
New Castle, NH
Crypto Invest Summit
Blockchain Technology Innovation
April 9-10, 2019
Los Angeles, CA
Security Tokens Uncensored Ep. 4: The Right Foundation w/ Justin Newton, Marty Tate & Dave Hendricks
Blood & Fog: The Military's Germ Warfare Tests in San Francisco

"Over a period of six days in September 1950, members of the US Navy sprayed clouds of Serratia from giant hoses aboard a Navy minesweeper drifting two miles along the San Francisco coastline, a bacterial fog quickly enveloped and disguised by the region’s own mist.

By monitoring the air at 43 scattered sites throughout the region, the Navy found Serratia bacteria blown throughout San Francisco and extending to the adjacent communities of Albany, Berkeley, Daly City, Colma, Oakland, San Leandro, and Sausalito (3)."

Circle Completes SeedInvest Purchase, Paving the Way for Tokenized Equities

" The deal, announced in October, is now officially completed after Circle obtained approval from the self-regulatory organization FINRA, the company’s co-founders Sean Neville and Jeremy Allaire announced Monday in a blog post.

'The acquisition is a further step toward realizing our vision of a more open, global, connected, and inclusive financial system,” they wrote. “Today [SeedInvest] are at the forefront of enabling startups to raise capital directly from investors over the internet — creating new capital formation options for startups and growth companies, and giving average retail investors the opportunity to invest directly into innovative private companies.' "

Winklevoss Twins Preach Trust, More Regulation for Crypto Market

"Building trust is key to regaining confidence among cryptocurrency traders after the death of a prominent exchange executive prevented thousands of people from accessing their accounts, according to Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

The twins, who run the Gemini Trust exchange, said investors were rattled after they were unable to access Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency accounts from the Quadriga CX exchange following the December death of its chief executive officer. Quadriga CEO Gerald Cotten held the electronic keys to access the cache, sending 115,000 users scrambling for ways to get back about C$260 million ($194 million). They’re still in limbo."