Online retail marketplace Overstock.com has purchased a 25 percent stake in PRO Securities, following its earlier announcement to offer a stock that works on the Bitcoin technology.
In April, the Patrick Byrne-led online retail giant had filed a prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicating that a stock offering may be in the offing using the technology behind the digital currency Bitcoin. The filing read,
“We may decide to offer securities as digital securities….the ownership and transfer of which are recorded on a cryptographically-secured distributed ledger system using the technology similar to (or the same as) the distributed ledger technology used for trading digital currencies.”
Interestingly, there was no mention of the New Jersey-based trading firm PRO Securities in the filing.
The Deal is a Winner for Overstock
Overstock.com is now all set to offer to a digital currency post its stake purchase in the trading company which is registered with the SEC and is linked with the National Market System – the network of exchanges and organizations overseeing stock trading in the United States.
Even though Overstock is awaiting approval from the securities regulatory body, it can still offer private securities because of its association with the registered firm.
Sounds new? Not really!
Overstock’s unconventional CEO might be hoping to reinvent or reform the financial markets utilizing the Bitcoin technology, but he has company in Nasdaq OMX, Digital Asset Holdings, and Symbiont. Digital Asset Holdings is already in the process of creating a blockchain-based system for securities trading.
The Hope
Leading companies intend to provide a vastly independent, extremely reliable and a highly transparent method of trading in the stock markets. However, it remains to be seen whether the developers involved can aptly apply the Bitcoin technology to the benefit of the financial market participants.