PricewaterHouseCoopers Releases Report on STOs and ICOs

One of the “Big Four” firms in the UK recently released a report analyzing the difference between STOs and ICOs. The report was developed in collaboration with the Swiss Crypto Valley Association.

We’ve discussed here on The Tokenist how there is a fundamental asymmetry of information in the security token space. Although there has been a growing body of work documenting this emerging industry, the public knowledge on it is still quite limited.

In an effort to inform the public and industry partners, the global consulting firm PwC has released a report with the help of Swiss Crypto Valley Association which analyzes the state of STOs and ICOs

The PwC Report

According to the report, PwC describes STOs are “much more mature and regulated” than their ICO counterparts. STOs provide holders with various financial rights while also combining it with some expected ICO features. It manages to merge the accessibility of ICOs with basic KYC and AML regulations.

Although the number of STOs and ICOs decreased in the latter-half of 2018, the report makes the case that token issuers will be moving towards STOs more and more in the future.

The report also makes the case that commodities such as gold and oil will soon also fall to tokenization.

If you’ve been following security tokens, much of this might be clear to you already. But the fact that PwC is now writing about security tokens likely means that the industry is becoming more and more visible in the financial world. Security tokens are starting to be taken seriously.

What do you think of the report? Are ICOs dying out or will they experience a possible resurgence? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Images courtesy of PwC.