Patrick Byrne’s t0 (t-zero) blockchain securities platform is launching its own token on 8th November, in what he’s predicting “will be the largest ICO ever.” t-zero, he promised, is going to disrupt the securities industry by grabbing its most valuable participants — institutional investors.
Byrne spoke at Money20/20 USA in Las Vegas Tuesday, in a talk titled “Bringing Liquidity to the ICO Market: t-zero’s Wall Street Licensed Crypto Token Exchange”.
t-zero’s new securities trading platform will finally bring liquidity to blockchain securities, and do it with the SEC’s blessing, Byrne said.
The new platform will launch on 8th November. There will be an ICO pre-sale of “SAFT” tokens starting 15th November and ending 31st December, which Byrne says is going to be the biggest the world’s ever seen.
He spoke of billions of dollars in investment capital waiting to jump onto the blockchain. There are up to 500 million tokens t0 could potentially list, and it has over 8,000 users (all Reg. D accredited US investors only).
Blockchain equities trading could prevent the kind of fraud and insane circle of debts and ownership that sparked the global financial crisis a decade ago. At least, that’s Byrne’s hope.
“You may have heard of short-selling,” he said. Amid frenetic selling activity there are more shares changing hands than actually exist. We have to fix fraud on the settlement layer, he said, referring to comments by Alan Greenspan in October 2008.
How big is this “securities lending”? It’s 75 percent of the revenue of Goldman Sachs’ prime brokerage, he said. That’s a problem under the traditional financial model, and potentially lucrative for t-zero.
There’s also a “pension tsunami” heading towards the US which will be the first trillion-dollar lawsuit, he added.
Guess what? Byrne said, t0 has the solution — reduce the role of the prime broker. t0’s platform features “digital locate receipts” that ensures money returns to rightful owners, and investors like pension funds.