Page - 220 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

‘Asset backed coins like theAspen Coin not only offer a transformative way to invest in real estate, but also establish a new way to store wealth by utilizing collateralized and income generating digital assets…we believe that the real estate tokenization model has tremendous potential in that it brings liquidity and disintermediation to theworld’s largest asset class’ (TemplumMarkets 2018). RegD506c offerings differ frompublic offerings, such as theAspenREIT IPO on the NYSE. For example, investors do not obtain voting rights, something that favours thepromoter.WhileRegD506careopen to thepublic to someextent, they are technically private placements that are only open to non-US persons or “ac- credited investors” in the US for the first year. Accredited investors must meet income, network, or asset thresholds as well as know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) requirements. However, this only applies to US investors; overseas investors do not need to meet these requirements. Standard ICOs do not have the same thresholds or requirements. Notwithstanding this, the offering can be advertised widely with no dollar limit on offering size andmuch lower disclosure thresholds. These lower compliance requirements reduce a per- ceived burdensome overheadwhile addressing legitimation issues associatedwith ICOs. Furthermore, participation is not limited to “those in the know”. Indeed, the AspenCoin offeringwas relatively self-service. Interested parties registered on the Templum Markets platform and provided documentation to verify accredited investor status and meet the KYC/AML requirements. Once verified, investors could participate in the offering; theminimum investment wasUS$10,000. Inaddition toTemplum’s existingnetworkof investors, theAspenCoinoffering was marketed to the nine million users of IndieGoGo, a first for the global crowdfunding platform. IndieGoGo co-founder Slava Rubin explained their motivation: ‘Wehave always strived to foster innovation and provide our users access to some of the most novel and interesting products and ideas fromaround theworld.With the blockchain revolution fully underway, we at Indiegogo are excited about the world-changing impact and potential of security tokens. Our goal is to [perform diligence for] each company and provide an access point to our growing network of millions of customers. And it’s a privilege toworkwith the St. Regis AspenResort’ (Wolfson 2018). Sowas theAspenCoin offering successful?On 9October 2018,AspenDigital announced18.9%of theSt.RegisAspenResort ownership throughUS$18million in tokens (Carroll 2018b). 4 Conclusion Entrepreneurs and SMEs have an unprecedented range of funding sources to draw from.Digital technologies areprovidingnewopportunities forvaluecreation, value capture, and value delivery for not only entrepreneurs but also investors. Online alternative finance is both disintermediating and democratising entrepreneurial finance transforming the access, relationship, and dynamics between supply and 226 T. Lynn and P. Rosati