tZERO, a blockchain subsidiary of e-commerce retail giant Overstock, announced today Aug. 6 that its Security Token Offering (STO) will comes to an end Monday night, with no further extensions.
tZERO said that its STO will close at 11:59 PM EDT, whereas investors with fully executed Simple Agreements of Future Equity (SAFEs) have to remit funds to tZERO by 5 PM EDT Wednesday. The startup will reportedly reveal the results of the STO on Thursday, August 9, during Overstock’s earnings call. While tZERO originally limited the maximum amount of tokens to $250 million, it is currently unclear how much it raised during the round.
The company initially introduced the STO in the form of an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in December last year, having attracted strong crypto and traditional institutional interest that reportedly resulted in $100 million committed to the platform during the first 12 hours.
In March, tZERO’s ICO fell under scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), causing Overstock’s share price to drop. Prior to that, Overstock had filed for its ICO to be classified under Regulations D and S instead of as a traditional securities filing. This meant that U.S. citizens must be accredited investors to have invested in the ICO, and that offshore transactions could not involve U.S. citizens.
In June, tZERO signed a letter of intent with Beijing-based investment company GSR Capital for the purchase of $160 million in tZERO Security Tokens at a price of $10.00 per token. Per the statement, tZERO also “entered into executed SAFEs in excess of $168 million for Security Tokens, of which over $95 million had been already funded.”
While Overstock announced its intentions to build an alternative ICO token trading platform late last year, tZERO initially introduced the prototype of its security token trading platform in April. Developers aimed to present a means of trading security tokens which are backed by real assets and are somewhat an interlink between blockchain and the traditional financial sector.
The platform will purportedly allow traders to exchange tokens “in an easy, compliant, and user-friendly manner” with features such as risk management software, an order management system, matching engine, and others.
