A trader makes a phone call outside the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on July 20, 2020 at Wall … [+]
tZERO announced today that it has entered into a partnership with Aspen Digital Inc. to enable its digital security (ASPEN) to trade on the tZERO ATS platform. The ASPEN shares represent $18 million of indirect ownership in the St. Regis Aspen Resort, Colorado.
Saum Noursalehi, tZERO’s CEO, said he expected to commence public trading of ASPEN this quarter.
Real estate tokens have been a blockchain fan-favorite use-case for a while, but few to none have made it more than a business prototype. This announcement by tZERO seems a significant step to large scale retail trading of blockchain-based real estate. Mr. Noursalehi continued, “I am excited to announce that we are partnering with Aspen Digital to trade the St. Regis Aspen token. This is a major milestone towards democratizing access to commercial real estate.”
tZERO stated in the announcement that ASPEN is the first digital security within Elevated Returns’ portfolio. Elevated Returns is a New York-based real estate asset management and advisory firm that intends to tokenize roughly $1 billion of real estate projects in the future. Elevated Returns President Stephane De Baets said, “Investing in commercial real estate projects is often prohibitive for most investors, particularly for high-profile properties. We believe investors will benefit from the transparency, accessibility and liquidity of the ASPEN digital security through our partnership with tZERO, who we view as the leader in capital markets innovation and secondary liquidity for private assets.”
Interestingly this new security is not associated with the Overstock brand, which owns tZERO as a subsidiary through Medici Ventures. Adding ASPEN as new blood to its blockchain brokerage could help the start-up attract additional companies seeking to access public investment away from traditional IPO markets.