Overstock represents one of the world’s biggest supporters of Bitcoin, considering the fact that they started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment long before many other popular companies. Well, recent reports indicate that the company has just become the first publicly-traded firm to issue stock, directly via the Internet, thus being ready to distribute 126,000 company shares, using the bitcoin blockchain.
With the help of a subsidiary, Overstock has spent the last two years trying to build a blockchain-based technology that would later be used to facilitate the trading of various financial securities of the firm. Back in October, the firm announced that they will allow stakeholders to purchase whatever number of shares they wish, from their preferred stocks.
Well, yesterday represented the first day of public, blockchain-processed day of stock trading for Overstock. Unfortunately, the tØ blockchain trading platform had little activity to show in terms of trading. However, according to the founder and CEO for Overstock, this isn’t really an issue, as at least two transactions took place, and were recorded and verified by the blockchain network. The fact that there is a public record of the transactions, and that the platform works as advertised is most important. Patrick Byrne believes that "There’s a new age coming to humanity riding the blockchain. Over the next decade, what the Internet did to communications, blockchain is going to do to about 150 industries, and capital markets is just one of them."
The reason behind this slow start may not be lack of interested. Rather, yesterday, Overstock was quick to announce that it had managed to raise a total of $10.0 million in an offering that comprised of $1.9 million of stock that was traded in the form of digital assets on the platform. Based on this, the actual numbers actually differ, with 55 people who have managed to purchase 124,565 shares, for the price of $15.68 a share. According to Byrne, it seems that while numerous parties have hosted sell offers, there is a difficulty currently stopping new people from capitalizing and creating accounts, thus stopping purchases from being made.
To further attempt and raise interested in purchasing stock from Overstock via their blockchain-based platform, Byrne has mentioned that: "The SEC has half a billion dollars to create a consolidated audit train and it falls out of our office for free. We’ll give it to them for free if they use our system."
Regardless of whether the interest was low, and leaving aside the little number of stock purchases, Overstock has managed to reach a milestone, thus becoming the first company to trade their stock on the internet, via a blockchain-based platform. Interest in the platform and popularity will eventually come, given the continuous growth of interested in the blockchain network, and the rising number of blockchain-based startups.
Based on everything that has been outlined so far, what do you personally think about Overstock’s tØ blockchain trading platform? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.