Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne tells Fox Business host that he wants to get out of retail and get into the blockchain business, despite plunging crypto prices.

Patrick Byrne claims that Blockchain is a technology that is here to stay and that the blockchain revolution has greater potential than anything we’ve seen in history. “Bigger than the Internet revolution and how it’s going to restructure society.” This is what he cares about, actual progress in blockchain innovation instead of being concerned with what specific coins are doing on a particular day.

Byrne said that he announced Overstock’s interest in blockchain about 4 years ago and has “very interesting positions with 19 blockchain companies.” In his eyes, 2019 will be the year where real-world blockchain products will finally be released. Among these products are ‘security tokens.’

He mentioned that last November, Bob Grayeldfi, chairman of the NASDAQ, said, “every stock and bond you see on Wall Street today could be tokenized and in five years will be tokenized.” This is just more evidence of blockchain technologies replacing and building the stock exchanges of the new world.

When asked why a security token is superior to buying a stock, Byrne replied with three main reasons:

90% lower regulations costs Complete transparency for regulators Immunity from Wall Street manipulation

Security tokens and blockchain technologies will help prevent Wall Street from playing games with the financial markets as they do now. Combing the best of both worlds in terms of features and solving fundamental issues.

Security Tokens Will Be The ICOs Of 2019

A NASDAQ article notes that improvements in infrastructure and the regulatory environment will create a tsunami of security tokens flooding the financial ecosystem. What’s new with these blockchain products is that they combine traits of both venture capital and utility tokens.

Source: Rohit Kulkami, NASDAQ

Regulators are keeping an open mind and want to avoid stifling innovation within the fintech space. This is especially so as institutional investors jump onto the crypto bandwagon.

Cryptocurrencies Are ‘Here To Stay’ Says Allianz Chief Economic Advisor

According to Mohamed El-Erian, who attended the Coin Desk conference in New York, cryptocurrencies will gain wider acceptance as institutionalized investors join the space. “I didn’t initially distinguish between cryptocurrency and the underlying technology. I treated it all as one,” El-Erian said. “As I evolved … I learned in the process.”

At first, he was unsure of the legitimacy behind cryptocurrencies as a global currency. He changed his mind after gaining a better understanding of blockchain’s distributed ledger technology (DLT.) Virtual currencies offer a secure transactions layer over the Internet, an improvement over our current leaky transacting methods.

“I think cryptocurrencies will exist, they will become more and more widespread, but they will be part of an ecosystem. They will not be dominant as some of the early adopters believed them to be,” El-Erian said.

Mohamed forgets to mention how as the tech industry engulfs the banking industry, it forces banks to adapt and fit into apps on mobile phones. Also, unlike cryptocurrencies, the current financial industry lacks “antifragility” and is propped up by governments. An issue Satoshi Nakamoto wants to solve with Bitcoin.

Image Source: “Flickr”