Tokenised Securities with Trevor Koverko from Polymath

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“This is even more regulatory friendly than the current scheme which has share certificates collecting dust in a filing cabinet. Tokens are a superior format and a way of owning something, they are programmable and you can do interesting things such as automating back-office functions like proxy voting and dividends.”
— Trevor Koverko

Interview location: New York, USA
Interview date: Wed 16th May 2018

As technology innovation and investment capital are brought together to accelerate the development of new ideas, many compare this new era of Crypto with the Dot Com boom. And there are many similarities: from the speculation and high levels of investment to the lack of proven business models.

While the birth of Crypto was with Bitcoin, a permissionless, censorship resistance, decentralised form of money, it is the blockchain backbone which is driving many of the ideas in the Crypto space. Still, we are yet to see many, if any, killer applications which have achieved global mass scale or a proven economic model. Some would argue that this is because we are still early and the tech, others would say that the majority of projects are not solving a problem or do not require a decentralised blockchain, but for the space to continue to grow, there is a need for the market to start delivering projects which are used at scale.

Blockchain innovations face many challenges, primarily around scaling, yet does this new economy require everything to be decentralised to have value? Are there other innovations within the space which can operate on centralised platforms or make traditional centralised processes more efficient?

The opportunity exists within the centralised world to tap into innovative features within the decentralised world of Crypto, yet avoid the failings and pitfalls of decentralised blockchains. By tokenising securities the traditional world of Wall Street money flow can be modernised and benefit from:

  • Programmable equity

  • Access to an entirely new, 24/7/365 global liquidity pool

  • Elimination of middlemen

With the first Dot Com boom, the focus was with ecommerce, yet the killer apps were search and social. Could the killer apps with Crypto be in the tokenisation of assets? It surely makes more sense to hold a token which can be transferred instantly across the globe than to have a share certificate in a drawer somewhere. Moreover, these tokens can do so much more.

Polymath is an ambitious project designed to allow the tokenisation of any asset, providing access to a global liquidity pool while reducing the cost of raising capital. The platform is designed to simplify and reduce the cost of creating a security, using the ST20 standard with built-in KYC to ensure tokens comply with regulations.

Polymath is one of a number of projects in the space, looking to integrate Wall Street with Crypto and in this interview, I talk with their CEO, Trevor Koverko about the project, the challenges they face and the opportunity within the market. 

Note: for full transparency, I am an investor in the Polymath token.

 

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BREAKDOWN OF THE SHOW

00:05:33: Introductions
00:07:22: The ST-20 token
00:09:55: Transferability of the token
00:10:34: Risk of theft
00:12:19: The token's use case
00:16:41: Scaling
00:19:23: The UX
00:24:33: The legal framework
00:27:31: Provider network
00:29:36: Mainnet live date
00:32:05: The issue with volatility
00:35:13: tZERO
00:38:25: Polymath and international borders
00:40:33: Investment for all
00:44:59: Final comments

THANKS

PodcastPeter McCormackPodcast, Trevor Koverko, Polymath, Ethereum, ST20, Security TokensComment