tZERO Chairman Patrick Byrne informed investors that the investment involving both Makara Capital and GSR Capital had missed its deadline. The $100 million raise was agreed upon in February and expected to close by mid-April. According to Byrne, tZERO is “not under any exclusivity with Makara or GSR and has retained advisors to pursue parallel alternatives.”

For the first time since the financial crisis in 2008, CEOs from America’s largest banks testified before the House Financial Services Committee of the United States Congress. In particular, Representative Warren Davidson (R-OH) inquired as to the banks’ current thoughts on the integration of blockchain and finance.

There’s been much discussion over the idea of tokenized stocks. DX.Exchange, for example, has been actively trying to tokenize many of the top stocks and bring them to the Ethereum blockchain. Although many of these ideas are still in the works, there’s now a tangible project that will bring the idea to fruition: Ambisafe will be releasing a new fund that will purchase SpaceX stocks and offer them to potential cryptocurrency investors.

According to recent data analysis by InWara, STOs experienced a notable surge in Q1 2019. With an increase of 130%—and a simultaneous drop in initial coin offerings (ICOs)—STOs are realizing their potential through real-world implementation… And the top four industries performing STOs were: 1) trading and investing (with seven); 2) the energy sector (with six); 3) financial services (with six); and 4) healthcare (with five).

SPiCE VC was fully tokenized in 2017, making it the world’s first tokenized VC fund… And its security token was the first to undergo a peer-to-peer transaction on a public blockchain. Co-founder Ami Ben-David discusses what the industry will need to be successful moving forward.

San Francisco-based security token issuance platform Securitize has raised more than $12 million to date. It has created the digital securities protocol, designed for the life-cycle management of security tokens… And now, Securitize has joined Hyperledger, the open source collaborative effort that aims to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies.

Decentralized financial contracts platform Universal Market Access (UMA) has announced the launch of a tokenized version of the stock market. Through USStocks, an ERC-20 token, UMA will enable individuals to become partial owners of the largest 500 companies in U.S. financial markets.

While there’s a growing body of work documenting this emerging industry, there’s still a fundamental asymmetry of information in the security token space… and public knowledge is still quite limited. In an effort to inform the public and industry partners, global consulting firm PwC has released a report—with the help of Swiss Crypto Valley Association—which analyzes the state of STOs and ICOs.

Institutional investing giant Fidelity spends a reported $2.5 billion each year on emerging technologies including artificial intelligence and blockchain. Its digital asset branch is now live and operational—with increasing institutional investor interest despite the industry’s current bear market. Fidelity’s research suggests this pattern will only continue.

Stablecoins are a hot item in the blockchain world. J-Coin Pay recently announced its official launch date in Japan, which will support its own stablecoin for payments. And J.P. Morgan announced it would be releasing its own stablecoin to speed up payments across borders, especially corporate debts.

South America’s largest investment bank will be releasing its own tokenized security, backed by real estate assets in Brazil. Banks have taken greater interest in blockchain technology, with JP Morgan, Fidelity, and others exploring cryptocurrency custody, trading, and even releasing their own tokens.

The small European city-state of Luxembourg passed a bill which provides a new legal framework for tokenized securities. The passed legislation is a historic move which signals that security tokens are not only here to stay, but will be a crucial part of the future’s digital infrastructure.