Overstock, an online retailer, had its shares jump by over 20% today. This was on the back of news that it will develop an alternative ICO token trading platform for investors.
This is also the highest that the shares have been since January in 2014. That Overstock is making this move towards ICO trading is not a surprise. Overstock was one of the first major retailers to accept Bitcoin back in 2014.
The trading platform will be a joint venture between a majority owned subsidiary of Overstock (tZero) and two companies called RenGen and Argon. This will allow people to trade the digital coins that have been raised through numerous ICOs. This will also be in full compliance of the SEC and FINRA as Overstock already has a licence for an alternative trading system.
More Choice in Digital Trading
The CEO of Overstock, Patrick Byrne told CNBC in an interview that the new platform should be ready in about 2 months. He also mentioned that Argon would be providing the deal flow to the platform whereas Rengen will be the market maker.
There is no doubt that the new exchange will be able to draw a large amount of traffic when it does eventually open up. Given that the platform will be regulated it will allow a large amount of those retail investors who were initially quite concerned about investing in offshore exchanges.
ICOs have been increasingly in the news lately. Firstly there was the complete blanket ban in China given that they fell afoul of regulations against raising money. There was also an announcement by the SEC that securities laws might apply to digital coins and warned investors about the dangers of investing.
Positive Press for Overstock
As evidenced by the jump in the share price, the market was very positive on this announcement by Overstock. Many analysts saw this benefiting Overstock and its new exchange in the long run at the expense of the current exchanges. According to Ryan Schoen, a financial services analyst at Washington Analysis
This move clearly increases pressure on existing exchanges that traffic in tokens that could be deemed securities to come into compliance with SEC and FINRA regulations.
He also claimed that this is exactly the kind of platform that the SEC wanted to see developed. You can read the full press release here.
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