Blockchain brings unicorns to millennials, Telecom News, ET Telecom

Private companies valued at at least $ 1 billion come with unusually daunting price tags investors. Banks that help unicorns Raising money is happy to calculate a few cumbersome subscriptions – $ 1 million and above – from top customers. It works well for regulators who don’t want the general public to lose their life savings on risky bets.

Was it the ticket, say 1000 dollars, even rich Generation Y may want to gamble the next time Facebook Inc. or Uber Technologies Inc. without having to wait for his company to enter the stock market. This wait is just getting longer. A large volume of $ 2.5 trillion of private equity – dry powder – are venture capital funds that promising companies can use to delay going public and spreading wealth more evenly.

The current situation is unfair. Until its recent initial public offering, Airbnb Inc. The mercenaries who never bothered to set foot on their property could buy it, while a younger, regular user could not. This space in access can also be expensive. The “huge downward pressure on wages” by the International Labor Organization in the near term — especially for women — can make it harder for millennials to make nest eggs if interest rates remain low for long periods.

However, the current setup lacks the technology to turn private securities into a mass market product. “Private banks only show deals to customers with a net worth of over $ 50 million,” says Oi Yee Choo, commercial manager. iSTOXis a Singapore-based digital securities platform that aims to democratize funding by fractionalizing it.

He’s not the first player to do this. San Francisco-based Forge Global Inc., Spotify Technology SA, Snap Inc. and Square Inc.’s over-the-counter shares to government wealth funds, family offices and asset managers. The company, backed by Peter Thiel, is now expanding in Asia. The timing is correct. Thanks to Airbnb and DoorDash Inc., initiative-backed IPOs There was a 2020 poster encouraging Asian unicorns to speed up their own listing plans. The closer the offer, the greater the retail appetite.

Blockchain it can offer a way to meet this demand. ISTOX, a startup that counts Singapore’s stock exchange and state-owned investment company among its investors, converts securities into tokens in distributed ledgers. These are not public and do not require permissions like Bitcoin. iSTOX tokens have no value in the outside world. Still, using them, time-consuming manual processes can be automated through smart contracts, which are self-running software code when conditions are met. A three-day payment cycle can be shortened to seconds. Bespoke investments can be resized as small parcels.

Regulated by Singapore’s monetary authority, iSTOX recently gave people access to the world’s first digitized unicorn fund for as little as $ 20,000. After securing $ 50 million of Series A funding from several Japanese government-backed investors and others this week, the goal is to create an exchange that will allow individuals to “participate in the growth of major pre-IPO companies like Grab and TransferWise.” example, ”says Choo. The technology can handle ticket sizes as low as $ 500.

Grab Holdings Ltd., which started as a car hailing service in Southeast Asia, is now a financial services player with a Singapore digital bank license. UK-based TransferWise has found its niche in offering cheaper international money transfers from banks. If the first supporters or employees of unicorns can withdraw cash whenever they want, the advantage of the $ 1.4 trillion market value can reach more people.

The lure of hot stocks and Robinhood Markets Inc. Despite the appeal of day trading platforms such as, the 25 to 40 year olds in the US have slightly higher cash risk than older cohorts. The future of jobs and wages is under a cloud. If millennials’ average retirement account balance of $ 83,000 doesn’t get a return increase, they’ll lag behind the richer older generations.

In Asia too, inequality is worsening in ways that will be important for both states and markets, according to Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. Unemployment is rising among Indonesia’s less educated employees, South Korea’s part-time workforce is facing a job. the crisis and India’s real wages have become crater. Above all, “the performance of financial assets is becoming a source of inequality,” says ANZ analysts Sanjay Mathur and Dhiraj Nim.

Politicians must use the buckle of technology before reaching the taxation hammer to solve the problem of inequality. Nevertheless, expectations about the gains from the democratization of such investments must be realistic. The sustained 20% annual return is something only top private equity managers can boast of. The 10-year performance advantage of the PE industry over public markets in the US disappeared in 2019. The US-China cold war and Beijing’s slowing of Ant Group Co.’s IPO – harnessing “technology, trade and giants” could affect future returns, Morgan Stanley says.

Singapore doesn’t have a chance to compete with Hong Kong for hot public offerings. However, by providing a pragmatic regulatory environment for businesses using blockchain – not for cryptocurrencies but to eliminate inefficiencies in everything from money transfers to trade finance and asset management – the financial center accepts a simple fact: To make (or save) promise. When it comes to money, Millennials and Generation Z will expect a fairer deal. The first to adopt technology unicorn products. Why should they be the last in line to get rich from businesses that they should explain to their parents?