Security Token Leaders Meet for the STO Future Global Conference in Singapore

The STO Future Global Conference was just held for the first time in Singapore on January 25th 2019. We at the Tokenist were invited as a media partner to the event which had over 500 attendees from all over the world.

The Tokenist had the privilege of attending the first ever STO Future Global Conference in Singapore. The event was a resounding success: with only 300 attendees budgeted and expected, there were in fact over 500 attendees and many prominent leaders in the security token space present. The atmosphere was optimistic, educational, and so friendly.

The keynote speech for the conference was done by Seth Moore, the SVP of TZero. The speech coincided with TZero officially opening their trading platform. TZero’s token sale has been by far the largest STO held to date.

We at the Tokenist managed to get a few interviews from prominent leaders to discuss why they attended the conference and what the takeaways were.

“The Conference Was So Impressive.”

One of our interviewees was Nick Cowan, CEO of the GSX Group, who said that he was impressed with the panel, the speakers, and that these are “very, very exciting times.”

GSX is a licensed and regulated digital exchange which is part of the Gibraltar Stock Exchange. They are looking to include tokenized securities onto their platforms and STO Future was the first such conference they have attended. Recently, we reported on them for offering insurance for digital assets and blockchain-based enterprises.

When asked about which are the most suitable assets to be tokenized, Cowan told us:

“We are seeing right now a pipeline… equities, particularly small and medium enterprises, companies looking for access to capital, fixed-income securities… we have an interesting pipeline of tokenized funds, but this also includes the tokenization of existing assets.”

Cowan went on to say that existing stocks like, for example, Sony could have a ‘wrapper’ around them like an American depository receipt, but call it an ‘electronic depository receipt’ and be settled on on a blockchain like, for example, the GSX exchange.

The potential to tokenize existing assets, according to Cowan, seems to be an inevitable future given the direction fintech is heading.

“The Future Still Seems Uncertain”

Edward Du, Co-founder of Talenta Pte. Ltd., took a more cautious tone compared to Cowan, describing himself as still “neutral” towards the concept.

Talenta is the largest blockchain consulting firm in Singapore and also owns one of the largest crypto-mining firms in China.

The issues, Du mentions, has to do with a few different aspects that need to still be tackled. For example, he told us:

“Infrastructure is inadequate, there is no volume, the credit rating for the companies opting for STOs are triple B or ‘junk rating.’ That could be a problem. Larger companies are still going for IPOs… without government regulations, this STO platform cannot take off.”

Du also said that, out of all the Asian countries, Singapore seems most willing to embrace the STO model “once it’s ready.”

Do you find yourself agreeing with the interviewees? Were you present at the conference or know someone who was? Let us know your thoughts on this first-ever event in Singapore in the comments