STOcheck: The Front-line Observer | Digital Security Frontier Vision #14

Welcome to Digital Security Frontier Vision: The Voice of the Core Builders from Global Digital Security Industry # 14.

Now welcoming Stefan Perlebach, CEO of STOcheck.com.

Stefan Perlebach, Co-Founder of STOcheck.com，and also the managing editor with Crypto-Blog TrustedDapps。He is currently working on Spreading Education around Security Token Offerings。

Security Token Offering List on STOcheck.com is the Ultimate Guide to many Digital securities enthusiast. Today The features of these 56 Security Tokens are revealed. Enjoy the Interview！

1. Please introduce yourself and STOcheck team?

STOcheck is a project presenting Security Token Offerings (STOs) in one simple overview on our website www.stocheck.com. STOcheck’s mission is the creation of a platform that allows investors to compare different types of STO-investments and to better understand them.

2. Why did you want to create STOcheck?

We believe that Security Tokens will disrupt the financial industry in a way that will make investments more transparent, efficient and accessible. In a world of Security Tokens, people will get the opportunity to participate in a market they formerly were excluded from and overall it will be cheaper and easier to take or make an investment. If this scenario turns out to be true, people will need guidance through all different types of investment opportunities out there. Providing this guidance is the reason why we created STOcheck.

3. What is BaFin’s attitude towards STOs?

To my knowledge, BaFin is very open minded towards Security Tokens. In February 2019, they approved the first German STO (named Bitbond). In their latest official statement from April 2019, BaFin talks about a “regulatory paradigm shift” in regards to Security Tokens, referring to the increased tradability it enables. Currently, BaFin just allows for tokenizing bonds and participation certificates. However, I think equity will join sooner or later.

4. In Europe, how do the issuers choose the issuing platform and trading platform?

Good question, I have no idea how they are choosing them. Currently, my feeling is that there are more Security Token Advisors and Issuance Platforms out there compared to actual issuers. At STOcheck, we try to form partnerships with those issuance platforms who we find knowledgeable and trustworthy. I guess that these two criteria will also apply for issuers searching for a company that helps them launching an STO. Pricing and the kind of blockchain solution (private vs. public) might be two more criteria issuers take into consideration when looking for which issuance platform to choose from. When it comes to trading platforms in Europe, there are many players who announced being active soon, but none of them are — to my knowledge — listing any Security Tokens yet.

5. How many Security Tokens are listed on STOcheck so far? Where do they come from and what industries are they operating in?

Currently, we have 56 Security Tokens listed, from which the majority are registered in the US (20), followed by Switzerland (7) and the Netherlands (4) and UK (4). The most popular industries are Financial Services (20), Software Services (6), Health Tech (5) and Real Estate (5).

Feel free to include the graphics for illustration purposes.

6. What is the liquidity of these companies after they do an STO? How about their financing situation?

Currently, it is not easy for many projects doing a successful STO. The retail crypto investor market became pretty cautious after ICOs were hyped and then crashed. Many people from crypto still don’t understand the concept of Security Tokens and might have wrong expectations (e.g. there is no 10x ROI on a tokenized bond). Traditional investors might understand the investment better than crypto people but might have a lack of knowledge regarding the technology.

To answer your questions, many STOs struggle to reach their soft cap but there are also successful examples such as ReitBZ and Bitbond.

The market and the infrastructure for Security Tokens is still in its infancy and we need to be a bit patient until it kicks in. Liquidity is not there yet due to the lack of secondary markets.

7. From the information of Security Tokens that you have summarized, what is the attitude of traditional assets to STO? Do you think STOs will bring the “old money” into the industry?

Eventually, blockchain will become the underlying technology of all securities and therefore all “old money” inevitably will enter this market.

My guess is that Security Tokens will become synonyms used for a new way to represent an investment STOs as a new method of fundraising.

The good thing is people not necessarily need to understand the technology and processes behind a Security Tokens and an STO in order to make this happen. All they need is to understand is the investment and to trust the system that executes the deal. If you are doing a bank transfer today, you will rely on the SWIFT system, if you are using Android on your smartphone you rely on Linux, if you are using the internet, you rely on The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Do you understand all those underlying technologies and processes? Most people probably not.

Security Tokens will thrive once the infrastructure will be so easy to use that nobody has to create a wallet manually or is obligated to store a private key. This will be all done in the backend.

8. You have seen so many digital securities. According to your observation, which kind of digital securities are currently popular with investors, and which kind of is not? why?

Most investors want to understand the investment they are making and trust the company behind the offering. Currently, those projects are performing well that already have a high level of trust, have built a community and have an operating business that runs for many years. Also, investors want to understand the business model and the product (basically, how do they make money). The payment structure and the investment type of the STO are also important — the easier, the better.

Projects which are pretty new, having a super innovative product and throw buzz words such as “decentralized AI blockchain platform” around, struggle the most since they seem harder to grasp and to trust.

9. Now many people think that shortage of liquidity is the big problem of STO industry, how do you see that? How to solve this?

Yes, indeed, that is a huge problem since liquidity is one of the biggest promises Security Tokens made. Making illiquid assets liquid is the most prominent claim yet

there are no secondary markets with any relevant trading volume in operation. Solving this problem just needs a bit of time and patience, great projects, compliant and easy to access infrastructure and more education on Security Tokens.

10. Is there anything else that you would like to share about STOcheck?

In the next 2 months we have two key goals that we want to achieve:

1. Make each investment (= STO) on our website easy to understand for investors

2. Publish our “Security Token Market Report” that will provide data on the whole ecosystem including a survey answering the question: “What is holding you back to invest in an STO?

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