Several recent market transactions confirm how the approach between traditional finance and the crypto ecosystem is inexorable. Countries like Germany and Switzerland are laying the groundwork from a regulatory and infrastructural standpoint to narrow the gap between the two worlds and make the transition less tumultuous. For example, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (“CME”), the world’s largest diversified derivatives market, offers a bitcoin futures trading product along with oil, gold, wheat and other futures. SIX, a major Swiss exchange, has also launched exchange-traded products (ETPs) of bitcoin and major cryptocurrencies; ICSE, the company that operates NYSE, has launched a platform for trading bitcoin futures called Bakkt. Germany’s financial market regulator, BaFin, recently granted the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase – recently listed on NASDAQ with a direct listing with a capitalization of approximately $105 billion – permission to provide proprietary custody and trading services. In addition, last April the Bundestag passed a law (“Fondsstandortgesetz” (FSG)) designed to strengthen Germany as a location for investment funds and could generate huge investments in cryptocurrencies. The FSG will allow a special category of investment funds (reserved only for institutional investors) to invest up to 20% of their assets in cryptocurrencies. It is also worth mentioning the M&A transaction carried out by Deutsche Börse Group, the company that controls the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, which acquired a majority stake in Crypto Finance AG, a financial group under the supervision of FINMA (the Swiss financial market authority) that offers trading, depository and investment services in digital assets to institutional and professional clients.
We have seen how it is changing quickly in some countries like Germany and Switzerland, but also in other European countries, there are virtuous episodes to monitor: let’s see for example what happens in Italy.
DTSocialize Holding: a FinTech ecosystem that follows the wind of change and the paradigm shift
DTSocialize Holding (the “Company”), based in the UK and founded by the Italian entrepreneur Daniele Marinelli, is a FinTech that has recently started the process of listing on the London Stock Exchange through a direct listing.
The choice of the city depends on the fact that London is the hometown of many Tech and FinTech companies already listed on the stock exchange. Moreover, we remind that the listing normally generates significant growth for companies. DTSocialize Holding, in the wake of other companies (e.g. Coinbase), has chosen the direct listing approach over the traditional initial public offering (“IPO”). While the IPO involves the issue and subsequent placing on the market of new shares, with the direct listing a company places on the market existing shares, whose price is decided, according to the law of supply and demand, on the same day in which the company opens to the market with the listing. Furthermore Direct Listing avoids the underwriting procedure by banks, thus shortening the listing process.
Although the authorization phase has not yet been started for DTSocialize Holding, the listing seems imminent, as well as its mission is well clear. Relying on an innovative FinTech approach, the company wants to create a bridge between the world of traditional finance and the digital world, enabling the users of its services to manage in a single environment native digital assets and fiat currencies.
In addition, the DTSocialize Holding Company also includes services that allow conversion from and to cryptocurrencies, the offer of financial instruments with crypto instruments, the offer of custody systems and finally a project of remuneration of data released by users through an alternative complementary digital currency, the DTCoin. It is hoped that more and more companies will understand that the paradigm shift is already underway, but surely the first to grasp the change will be able to acquire dominant positions in the markets. And DTSocialize will surely be a key player in this field, one of the first ready to outline the financial markets of the future.
DANIELE MARINELLI DT SOCIALIZE