Page - 219 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

investorswith a prospectus, a legal documentwhich contains detailed information about theofferingand thefinancial elementsofyouroffering.Theprospectushas to beapprovedbyafinancial regulator and isdesigned toprotect investors fromfraud. 3.2.3 Case Study: AspenCoin—The First Real Estate STO Aspen, Colorado is one of the most expensive towns in the USA. Founded as a mining town in thenineteenthcentury, thedevelopmentof theAspenarea intoa ski resort heralded unprecedented real estate investment into the area and a skyrock- eting of property prices that has continued today. Reliable snow, a variety of ski terrains, historic neighbourhoods, year-round events, and celebrity cachet have resulted in a proliferation of second homes adding to the already superheated property market. In 2017, Aspen had the highest entry threshold for high-end properties across theUSA (Block 2017). TheSt.RegisAspenResort is afive-star luxurydestinationnestledat thebaseof AspenMountainmanagedby a subsidiary ofMarriott International. It is ownedby AspenREIT, Inc. InNovember2017,AspenREITannounced its intention tobe the first single-assetREIT to list onanational exchangebyoffering1,675,000 shares at US$20 per share on theNYSEAmerican stock exchange (AspenREIT 2017). At the time, AspenREITCEOStephaneDeBaets said: ‘We plan to bring to the market a first-of-its-kind real estate offering that provides indi- vidual investorswith theopportunity toownshares inahighlyattractive, trophyasset in the St.RegisAspenResort.Historically, the chance toownaportionof an individual property of this calibre and stature was only available to institutions. With our offering, we are changing this model while at the same time providing individual investors with liquidity optionality for a single-asset investment. Our value proposition is innovative and, we believe, highly compelling’ (AspenREIT 2017). However, inMarch 2018,AspenREITwithdrew its common stock from listing on the New York Stock Exchange. It had other plans. De Baets told the Aspen Times: ‘…we believe many people secretly want to own a piece of the St. Regis Aspen hotel. Owningadigital token is theequivalentofowningashare, and isadigital security.Wesaw that doing an IPO was not scalable through the traditional route. Seeing where the blockchainmarketwas heading,we saw the opportunity to befirst-moverswith our token offering for the St. Regis Aspen’ (Carroll 2018a). In August 2018, TemplumMarkets launched Aspen Digital, a tokenised asset offering (TAO), on Templum’s trading platform.AspenDigital is a digital RegD 506c security offeringopen to accredited investors (TemplumMarkets 2018). Each token, called anAspenCoin, represents, through indirect ownership, one share of common stock in theSt.RegisAspenResort.AspenCoins canbeboughtwithUS dollars, BitCoin or Ethereum.More important, all AspenCoins are backed by the St. Regis AspenResort asset. De Baets clearly felt he had found amore efficient, cost-effective, and liquidmeans to raise funds: NewSources of Entrepreneurial Finance 225