Although 2019 still has several weeks to go, it felt timely to do a round-up of what 2019 has been for Maecenas and also to give our community an update on what’s coming and what to expect from 2020.

This has been a year of many challenges for us, yet we see it as a year of success in which Maecenas has made tremendous progress. We, as a company, battled and survived the alleged “crypto-winter”, we completely re-worked the legal structures which underpin our tokenisation vehicles, and we furthered our platform development and brand positioning.

I take this opportunity to share my thoughts on some key topics that are central to our company.

Security Tokens

As many of you know, when we launched our platform last year, and we hit the milestone of being the first company to ever tokenise a multi-million-dollar asset, we did it the STO way. This was even before the media hype around STOs had even started.

The successful launch and pilot auction provided invaluable insights for us, and as pioneers in the tokenisation space, we as a company, realised that we had to make some drastic changes if we wanted to scale at the pace we intend to. The world of financial regulation just isn’t moving fast enough to allow us to progress in our journey, which meant that a different path had to be taken. And so, the legal wheels were set in motion and in May 2019 we completed the design of a completely new and innovative tokenisation model, and thus Asset Tokens were born.

In our journey towards disrupting the fine art market, which is still arguably the largest unregulated asset class, we must ensure we are free from the pitfalls and burdens of financial regulation.

We see the non-security tokenisation approach of fine art as fundamental for mass adoption. However, we are fully aware that certain jurisdictions may still consider asset tokens as securities, and therefore we must be prepared to enter these markets equipped with the right tools and frameworks to ensure that the company is fully compliant.

The Asset Token Exchange

Maecenas isn’t just about fractionalising fine art. It is also about creating liquidity and trading activity for the art-backed tokens. Our team has been working hard on building and launching an exchange platform that would allow investors to trade their tokens in real-time and create dynamic price action for what have traditionally been very static asset prices.

Given the regulatory uncertainty, and the constraints revolving around licensing of exchanges of securities, we decided that the company would be much better placed to embrace future regulation if the tokenisation and issuance platform was independent from the exchange platform. With that strategy in place, a new crypto exchange was born to support the Maecenas mission: ATEX.

Integrated to the Maecenas Ecosystem, the Asset Token Exchange will list and support every artwork token issued by Maecenas.

ATEX being operational is a significant milestone in the Maecenas roadmap, and sits alongside the new tokenisation vehicle as the top achievements of the company this year.

Next Auction

Many in our community have asked when our next auction is going to be. As a new player in a very conservative market, it is paramount that we build a strong reputation by taking solid steps towards our goal.

If we had rushed to do more auctions before the right infrastructure was in place, we would have created unnecessary risks for both our company and for our investors. With the new tokenisation vehicle fully validated, and the exchange platform in place, we can now finally focus on business growth.

Our objective for 2020 will be primarily to develop our market in Asia and Europe. We believe that our partnership with Startbahn presents a great opportunity to establish ourselves firmly in Japan whilst expanding the business to other markets.

We look forward to your continued support in our journey, and welcome your participation in our upcoming auctions next year, with the full details of our first one to be announced in January.