A global platform for entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to life has announced that it is expanding into tokenised securities. By doing so, it hopes to bring true real estate assets to its global audience of investors.
Headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York and Los Angeles, Indiegogo is a platform that enables business people to launch new and groundbreaking products. Launched in 2008, the platform’s mission is to empower people to unite around ideas that matter to them, bringing them to life.
Announced today, the platform is expanding and providing access to the asset class of security tokens. To mark its step into this arena, Indiegogo is providing its users with the opportunity to own a tokenised share of common stock in the prestigious St Regis Aspen Resort via the Aspen Digital token offering.
Located within view of the Rocky Mountains, the luxury resort situated in Colorado is a quintessential Aspen ski resort. Purchased by Elevated Returns in 2010, it is conducting a single-asset real estate investment trust (REIT) offering. This is reported to be a first-of-its-kind opportunity that will divide up a minimum of $12 million for investment in security tokens.
In light of the news, Slava Rubin, founder of Indiegogo, said that the company is “always striving to foster innovation, providing our users access to some of the most novel and interesting products and ideas from around the world.”
“With the blockchain revolution fully underway, we at Indiegogo are excited about the world-changing impact and potential of security tokens,” Rubin added. “Our goal is to diligence each company and provide an access point to our growing network of millions of customers.”
With a global audience of more than 10 million members, across 235 countries and territories, accredited investors will be able to purchase Aspen Coins with U.S. dollars as well as with Bitcoin and Ether.
“Security token offerings are the investment tool of the future, a mechanism designed to store wealth by utilising income-producing digital assets,” said Stephane de Baets, founder and president of Elevated Returns. “By opening access to investing in traditional assets like real estate, we are creating a new opportunity for investors to explore an ownership stake in something previously only accessible to private investors and high net worth individuals.”
As opposed to a utility token, a security token represents value of an outside source. It typically represents an ownership stake in traditional assets such as real estate, equity, bonds, and VC funds.
Such is the growth of security token offerings that in July the Malta Stock Exchange revealed that it had entered into new partnerships to develop and launch blockchain-powered trading platforms for security tokens.
Additionally, earlier this month it was reported that Chinese exchange giant Huobi had announced an investment in and partnership with the OpenFinance Network. According to the report, the OpenFinance Network pegs itself as “the first U.S. based regulated security token trading platform.”