Tekenizing life

This white paper is a review of the current state of the ICO (initial coin offering) phenomena that has emerged since 2013, and has now gone mainstream in the early part of 2017.

It discusses its benefits as an innovation, primarily to better enable open source communities to self-finance and realise new decentralised digital economies that are inherently less fragile when compared to traditional venture capital backed models.

It looks pragmatically at the flaws of ICOs and how they can be improved upon. In particular, we provide an analysis of a trend we are seeing organically emerge from the space called ‘Community Token Economies’ (CTE).

This is where multiple parties join forces to realise what we have termed Minimum Viable Community (MVC) in order to achieve network effects more efficiently and rapidly compared to going it alone.  Finally, we describe the implementation of a new framework being developed at Outlier Ventures to allow this to happen in a more structured and effective manner.

Our aim is to ensure these new digital economies are increasingly self-sustaining.
 

CONTENTS

1 The Opportunities & Challenges of Tokens  

2 Stronger Together: the Community Token Economy  

3 Main Concepts  

4 Planning and Phases  

5 CTE Economics  

6 Technical Scoping & Decision-Making  

7 Governance Models  8 Corporate Structuring  9 Bringing the CTE Concept to Life 

Download this Whitepaper here: https://outlierventures.io/cte-wp

Blockchain has been perhaps the major story in tech this year. Blockchain startups are being founded left and right with concepts designed to take on a wide gamut of verticals.

They could be about something as simple as digital payments like TenX or as dubious like Eros.vision.

According to Token Market’s initial coin offering (ICO) calendar, dozens of companies are currently holding their ICOs all keen on securing funding for their blockchain-based services. More token sales are slated for the coming weeks. These ICOs are generating serious capital with more than $1 billion already invested just this year.

Due to the range of business models being promoted, interested investors must perform their due diligence to weed out companies that are offering something with real value.

Blockchain startup Liquid Asset Token (LAT) is focusing on something familiar but its vision is still grand nonetheless. LAT is a platform for a secondary marketplace that connects investors and buyers keen on acquiring illiquid assets such as real estate, bank loans, and even works of art and owners who would want to sell and liquidate.

Selling these kinds of assets has its challenges. For starters, liquidating big ticket items can take time. Often, sellers may also have to absorb losses depending on type of asset and the demand. Sellers would often have to secure third party services such as brokers or auction houses to connect them to their network of buyers and facilitate the sale. 

This is why some have to resort to pawning these items or putting them up as collateral for loans in the event that they need quick cash. Commissions can also be expensive. In addition, payments often have to be handled by an escrow service and documentation often have to be handled by lawyers. These are all costs sellers just have to absorb. Sellers will have to sacrifice much just to liquidate these assets.

LAT aims to make the experience a whole lot easier and secure for both buyers and sellers. Unlike the typical classified ads sites, the LAT marketplace allows sellers to tokenize their property. What this means is that asset owners can offer shares of the assets instead of waiting for a buyer to acquire the whole property.


This gives owners a means to get hold of cash quicker and retain fractional ownership of the property – a much more attractive prospect than pawning or using the property as collateral. They can eventually lose on interest or worse, foreclose the property. For investors, they can enjoy part ownership of properties and can eventually benefit from the rise in value of these properties.

“LAT unlocks the value of assets by transforming the way money flows between asset owners, borrowers, banks and investors. With the LAT blockchain, assets records are traceable, transactions are registered, and ownership is verifiable.

The net result is that previously illiquid assets are now tradable without the expensive and cumbersome securitization processes needed to protect investors. Access to capital for banks, borrowers and asset owners occurs at dramatically lower cost,” shares LAT CEO and founder Valentin Preobrazhensky.

Preobrazhensky has facilitated more than 10,000 mortgage offers and 1,000 deals last year. Joining him and advising the company are Hyperloop advisor Anish Mohammed, LDJ Capital chair David Drake, and Blockchain Lab chair Ismail Malik.

LAT’s business model isn’t entirely new as it’s similar to a home equity marketplace. Blockchain provides the transparent and immutable means to record all transactions. In addition, the integration of smart contracts – software that can track and...continue reading: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-latoken-uses-blockhain-to-tokenize-your-house_us_5980a433e4b...