Photo: tZERO / Twitter
Overstock’s blockchain subsidiary tZERO announced that their security tokens are finally available for trading by non-accredited investors. Before that, the only one who could trade in digital securities were accredited investors.
As per their announcement, preferred equity security tokens (TZROP), issued in a private placement in August last year, are now available to be resold under Rule 144 under the Securities Act of 1933. Investors that have an account at Dinosaur Financial, may trade their tZERO security tokens on the PRO Securities alternative trading system (ATS).
Investors who want to purchase or resell tZERO security tokens and do not have an account at Dinosaur Financial may visit Dinosaur and create an account. Just to remind you, Dinosaur is a partner with a tZERO’s sister company, PRO Securities, that enabled secondary trading of tZERO tokens.
tZERO CEO Saum Noursalehi confirmed:
“Following the one-year anniversary of the close of our security token offering, non-accredited investors now have the ability to purchase and trade in our security tokens. Today marks another milestone as we further democratize access so all investors, regardless of net worth, can invest in the business opportunity of a blockchain-based capital market.”
He also noted that this will act as a nice handout to their shareholders and it helps the reason for getting a lot of adoption on the platform. For tZERO, he confirmed the number of 50,000 expected investors that already keep Overstock’s shares to begin their digital securities trading.
From the company, they added that tZERO might distribute a quarterly dividend equal to 10% of tZERO’s adjusted gross revenue to its security token holders.
tZERO is a subsidiary of Overstock.com, that is functioning as both securities’ trading and token issuance platform and they for sure had a long year. They have been working on their mobile trading app and have been trying to integrate the platform with Securitize’s Digital Securities (DS) Protocol. For now, tZERO has to get the BitLicense, a virtual currency license required by the New York Department of Financial Services order to operate from within the state.
Noursalehi described the process of getting the license as a challenging issue and expressed his hope that they would manage to do it within the following six months.
Let’s also not forget that the company is still under SEC investigation because of the tZERO’s STO. Just to remind you, in March this year, SEC conducted an investigation requesting that the company voluntarily provide certain documents related to the offering itself, and the tokens in connection with its investigation. The investigation pretty seriously ruined the plans to sell Overstock’s flagship retail business.
In January this year tZERO initially offered its secondary trading of security tokens, to accredited investors only.
“The world of security tokens has lacked a regulated venue for secondary trading. The trading of our own security tokens is the crossing of the Rubicon for the new world of digital assets. This will create liquidity, democratize access, bring transparency and efficiency to global markets and accelerate the adoption of security tokens,” said Noursalehi at that time talking about the sale as democratizing access to global markets.
