Terry Belgrave, business development associate for the international security market for the BSE, spoke to the Investing News Network (INN) about security tokens. Apparently, the demand for the tokenized financial instruments is still high in Barbados.

As investors flock to nations with regulatory clarity, Barbados is trying to set itself apart. Countries like Malta, Switzerland, and Gibraltar have become hubs for blockchain-based development, and the small country hopes to follow in their footsteps. That’s why this past February, the Barbados Stock Exchange (BSE) made a strategic agreement with Toronto-based Blockstation.

According to Belgrave, the momentum is shifting towards security tokens.

“We’ve been approached by international mining companies, international issuers from the United Arab Emirates who have north of US$500 million of assets or commodities that they are willing to tokenize,” Belgrave said. “But we just didn’t have a way, at our exchange level, for those things to proliferate and trade.”

For now, the exchange needs to first realize infrastructural and custody concerns before delving into security tokens.

“(Custody) is a topic du jour in this space. Because in the decentralized exchanges, the retail investor has access to unregulated activity, which means if anything goes wrong, it leaves the investor left holding the bag,”

Overall, Belgrave admits that too many investors got burned in 2017. However, security tokens can help reinstill confidence because all the traditional protections are in place.

“What I’ve learned about cryptocurrency is that the demand is enormous, but investors got burned. They really, really, got burned,” Belgrave said. “That’s the difference between this unregulated, decentralized crypto exchange space and the regulated securities market.”

The Barbados Stock Exchange currently handles some $8.7B in assets and was founded in 1987. It hopes to follow the likes of the Jamaica Stock Exchange which began listing security tokens this year.

Do you agree that these smaller stock exchanges have much to gain by opening up to security token trading? Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below.

Image courtesy of BitCryptoNews.ru.