A new digital exchange will enable investors to trade in companies—including Apple, Facebook, and Tesla—outside of the U.S. even when the stock markets are closed. DX.Exchange, which has offices in Estonia and Israel, will offer digital tokens based on share of 10 Nasdaq-listed companies with plans to expand to the New York Stock Exchange.

As well as offering the potential for legally compliant ICOs, advocates argue that STOs allow companies to put existing securities such as stocks and bonds on a cryptographic blockchain, so people can trade securities with no need for a middleman. In theory, any form of value could be “tokenized”—stock certificates, diamonds, even art collections.

Through Oxygen Hospitality Group’s upcoming STO, investors in its hotels will receive shares—represented by tokens—with asset backed security and a level of transparency important for investing in real estate. Infusing technology into all aspects of its business from raising capital for acquisitions to hotel operations is a key focus in Oxygen’s growth.

Experts are already predicting that the STOs will be a multitrillion-dollar market in the next few years. And for once, regulatory authorities and the crypto community are seeing eye-to-eye, as STOs are being looked at favourably both by regulators and blockchain ventures. Here’s what makes STOs the new darling of the crypto space...

Jon Walsh is associate partner of Blockchain Rookies, a Blockchain education and strategy consultancy firm. He shares his predictions on the future of such things as SEC prosecutions, STOs, and blockchain protocol.

More and more companies are filing SEC Form D to conduct STOs, a reliable and convenient substitution to traditional IPOs and ICOs. Fundraising via STO is compliant with U.S. laws, thus allowing crypto companies to sell security tokens to big institutional players—something startups weren’t able to do before.

With interest for ICOs cooling down, a new type of blockchain-powered funding mechanism is gaining a lot of buzz—the STO. STOs are still a very new model, and the infrastructure for conducting STOs and potentially trading the tokens on a secondary market is being developed by multiple companies.

BaseCore is leveraging its own stable coin with the portfolios of private IT companies… The token is made up of two main components. The first is the investor element, which is based on high-yield assets from non-public IT startup assets. The second is the stabilization factor. The value of the underlying asset is used to fix the base redemption price.

In the past months, regulators began cracking down on token sales and exchanges that do not comply with existing securities regulations. While officials have suggested that bitcoin and ETH are not securities, uncertainty still hangs over other digital currencies like XRP.

Just as investors in real estate investment trusts can buy shares that represent an ownership stake in a piece of large trophy assets, a digital security token offering functions much the same way. Known as "tokenization," companies are trying to pioneer a system for trading ownership shares in real estate using blockchain technology and REITs as the vehicle.

Today Frank welcomes first-time guest Carlos Domingo. Carlos is CEO and co-founder of Securitize, which provides end-to-end solutions for anyone looking to tokenize an asset. It’s also the company we’ve partnered with to help with the upcoming launch of our Curzio Equity Owners (CEO) security token offering.

While some may lament the entry of regulators in 2018, clamping down on ICO projects and putting in place strict frameworks for compliance, these are signs of a market maturing. Speculators aside, industry experts knew the Wild West of Crypto was only a transitionary phase, and the time has come to focus on holistic, sustainable growth with real, tangible benefits.