Overstock Purchases Stake in Stock Brokerage Firm for Upcoming Blockchain-based Securities Exchange

A new Wired report suggests that US retail giant Overstock has completed a working demo of its decentralised stock market Medici and that the project may soon be presented to US regulators. The report is one of the first to suggest the Medici project is moving forward past conceptual stages following its October launch. Updates on the project have since been scarce with two high-profile developers leaving in February and Overstock submitting an SEC filing related its proposed issuance of digital securities in April. The latest Wired report further indicates that Overstock has purchased a....

Online retail marketplace Overstock.com has purchased a 25 percent stake in PRO Securities, following its earlier announcement to offer a stock that works on the Bitcoin technology. In April, the Patrick Byrne-led online retail giant had filed a prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicating that a stock offering may be in the offing using the technology behind the digital currency Bitcoin. The filing read, "We may decide to offer securities as digital securities....the ownership and transfer of which are recorded on a cryptographically-secured distributed ledger system....

Overstock.com, one of the most visible retailers to embrace bitcoin, grabbed the interest of securities traders when it announced a blockchain-based securities platform and later won government approval to issue stocks via the blockchain. To help securities traders learn more about Overstock’s plans with its securities trading technology, Alex Pitti, a writer for Seeking Alpha, interviewed the communications director of Overstock.com. As a result of this interview, Pitti concluded he is not recommending Overstock stock since he questions Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne’s interest in the....

The Salt Lake City-based online retailer Overstock is working on a revolutionary new development: a new independent stock exchange powered by Bitcoin technology. The new stock exchange could sidestep traditional stock exchanges such as NYSE and NASDAQ and issue corporate stock directly over the Internet. Overstock, one of the first and largest online retailers to accept bitcoin payments, first announced the project in October 2014. "There is an opportunity to recreate the financial world as we know it in the parallel universe that is the blockchain," Overstock's CEO Patrick Byrne told....

A major securities brokerage in Japan is reportedly testing a blockchain-based stock trading system in Myanmar. According to Nikkei, Daiwa Securities Group’s research outfit has been in Myanmar working with the Yangon Stock Exchange. The goal, the Asian regional newspaper reported, was to test mechanisms by which problems with critical trading infrastructure could be avoided or resolved more efficiently. Testing is said to have begun in March, involving five local firms along with the Yangon-based exchange. Daiwa, according to local sources, has an ownership stake in the exchange. The....