During the 4th quarter conference call that took place on March 18, 2019, Overstock.com, Inc. expanded upon their vision of a blockchain controlled future, where capital markets, voting, property contracts and commerce are all streamlined through the use of security tokens based on blockchain technology. OSTK saw past simply bitcoin, and encouraged their engineers to become experienced with the fundamentals of blockchain technology as a whole. As a result, the company is well positioned to take advantage of the upcoming revolution through their wholly owned subsidiary, Medici Ventures, Inc.

Overstock.com, Inc’s Founder and CEO Patrick Byrne opened the conference call with the vision behind Medici Ventures by stating, “we want to have a play where blockchain meets identity and blockchain meets land titling, and blockchain meets banking and currency, and capital markets, commerce that is blockchain meets supply chain, and lastly blockchain meets voting.”

Medici Ventures has been all-in on the concept of blockchain for almost four years. As a result, they are ahead of the curve in regards to the current technology and its implementation. According to Byrne, “we are so far in front of the pack because we’ve been at this for four years. We have accomplishment after accomplishment, both in mechanics of the trading platform and the work with the SEC to get various things done such as filing, S-1s and S-3s and getting blockchain securities actually issued and actually trading on a platform. And now you see that we are in a JV with a lit U.S. exchange the Boston Options Exchange, and we aim to have by the end of this year our joint venture live with them.”

Medici has 19 companies in various areas of the blockchain landscape, in the hopes of building a tech-stack that can synergistically expand their offerings while also sharing the tech. While Medici has organically developed most of their technology, they are also acquiring leading blockchain companies where necessary. Examples of acquired work-product includes SpeedRoute and PRO Securities.

The Market that exists for their security token technology is enormous. The company estimates that if they look at just equities, bonds and real estate, there exists about $508 trillion of value. Harnessing this market would require a complete replumbing of the entire way these markets do business, however that is the fundamental hypothesis that Medici Ventures is betting on.

The blockchain company often referred to as the “crown jewel” of their portfolio is tZERO. This is blockchain based security token system that is designed to allow issuers to raise capital through token offerings, as well as trade the security tokens on the company’s exchange or through secondary trades. According to Saum Noursalehi, CEO if tZERO, securities tokens offer “a cost effective way to customize the security. They provide the ability to automate administrative costs of smart contracts, provide preferred equity dividends, custom voting rights as well as make utility or loyalty offerings easy. They also reduce friction costs by eliminating middleman and automating the compliance of security loss, which can actually be coded into the tokens themselves through the smart contract. Today this compliance is an annual $425 billion industry. Security tokens also enhance liquidity of traditionally illiquid assets, private securities funds, real estate are all examples.”

tZERO had much to report during the conference call. They issued their token on October 12 of last year. They also acquired Bitsy, both to expedite their time to market of crypto trading through their application but also because they have a strong wallet built utilizing a biometric login. tZERO has also been recently awarded a broad patent for trading digital asset and on January 10, they started onboarding investors with secondary trading beginning on January 25, 2019.

Medici Ventures also detailed in the conference call four other blockchain hopefuls; Medici Land Governance, which is designed to streamline Real Estate transactions throughout the world. Bitt, a digital wallet designed to allow efficient transfer of money. Vinsent, a wine based token designed to provide security and authentication within the high priced wine industry, and finally Voatz, a blockchain product designed for secure voting from remote locations.