With the SEC earlier this month declaring their stance on ICOs and that some can be categorized as Securities Offering, a firm by the name of Harbor has launched a platform to tokenize private securities. The firm announced their first private sale via medium and it will be of a dormitory facility at the University of South Carolina.
The announcement came just yesterday, November 27th, and the team let the investment community know that they were compliant with existing securities laws. The housing facility for students at the center of the new securities offering is known as The Hub at Columbia. The sale is in conjunction with Convexity Properties: a DRW Company.
The total investment opportunity is valued at $20 Million with each token is going for a cool $21,000. A total of 955 shares/tokens will be up for sale.
CEO of Harbor, Josh Stein, summarized his vision for Harbor in the following statement:
We are excited to partner with Convexity Properties to introduce a more accessible and liquid form of commercial real estate investment through the Harbor platform.
Harbor is transforming private investments by making it easier and more cost effective for issuers and broker-dealers to syndicate more widely, raising capital from a potentially broader and more global investor pool.
In turn, investors can access opportunities previously out of reach through lower entry points, and co-invest alongside premier companies like Convexity Properties with the potential for enhanced liquidity.
Habor’s Utilization of the Ethereum Blockchain
Today’s announcement by Habor did not dwell much on which blockchain platform they will be using. But investigating the firm’s whitepaper, we find the following explanation on their R-Token standard:
Harbor is building a decentralized compliance protocol to standardize the way crypto-securities are issued and traded on blockchains. The first project is R-Token, an open-source standard that defines a mechanism in which crypto-securities can be compliantly transferred on blockchains.
It requires issuing a permissioned ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain that checks an on-chain Regulator Service for trade approval.
The Regulator Service can be configured to meet relevant securities regulations, Know Your Customer (KYC) policies, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements, tax laws, and more.
The R-Token Standard enables ERC-20 tokens to become compliant crypto-securities that can be traded across any ERC-20 compatible platform.
About Habor
Backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Pantera Capital, Craft Ventures, Vy Capital, and Valor Equity Partners, Habor aims at ushering in a new wave of tokenized securities backed by real world assets as can be seen with the student housing example at the University of South Carolina.
The class of assets that Habor aims to tokenize are in real estate, company equity, investment funds and fine arts. By using its Regulated Token (R-Token) Standard, Habor hopes to deliver the first securities platform for issuers of securities and licensed broker-dealers.
