Various sources close to Overstock say that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a S-3 filing for Overstock.com to issue new publicly traded shares on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Overstock.com is an online shopping retailer based in Salt Lake City, Utah, selling a broad range of products at low prices including furniture, rugs, bedding, electronics, clothing, and jewelry, and is ranked in Forbes list of the Top 100 Most Trustworthy Companies in 2014.
In June it was reported that the company issued a private digital bond according to which accredited investors will trade using blockchain, a distributed online ledger underlying bitcoin.
In fact, Overstock.com became the first company to solicit qualified institutional buyers in a digital corporate bond which will trade using the same technology that underlies cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. This pioneering development is part of the company’s larger cryptofinance initiative known as Medici.
“The cryptorevolution has arrived on Wall Street,” said Overstock.com CEO Patrick M. Byrne. “We’re making it official by offering the world’s first cryptosecurity.”
Byrne also unveiled tØ,a platform created on the basis of blockchain and promising to change financial market. The main services of tØ platform include public and private equities trading and short tokens.
In August, tØ acquired Wall Street brokerage firm SpeedRoute.
“It’s a routing service that is connected to all 11 exchanges and 25 dark pools in the United States, it’s a very significant node within the national market already … We knew that we wanted to bring the blockchain to Wall Street and rather than build it in isolation and try to get people to adopt it, if we bought a node within the national market system and then built the crypto on top of it so it was all regulatory compliant and speaks the technology of FinTech … We didn’t want to be a Mt.Gox trying to build something and sneak it past the regulators,” said Patrick Byrne in an interview with the Tabb Forum.
So far, according to some sources, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a S-3 filing for Overstock to issue new publicly traded shares on the Bitcoin blockchain. However, an Overstock spokesperson refused to comment on the matter but noted that the firm would be publishing a formal statement soon.
It’s necessary to add that Overstock.com owns 25% stake in government-run commercial company PRO Securities which is known for its alternative approach to trading systems. It acts differently from such stock exchanges as NASDAQ or New York Stock Exchange and is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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