Online retailer Overstock has stepped up its plans to issue "digital securities" through the acquisition of a 25% stake in alternative trading system (ATS) PRO Securities, according to Wired.
Last year Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne hired developers and lawyers in an effort to create a platform - dubbed 'Medici' - that could use the core blockchain technology to create a cryptosecurity trading system, in which computer algorithms are used to trade virtual stocks issued by public companies.
Then, in a recent prospectus filed with the SEC related to the sale of securities, the company revealed: "We may decide to offer any of the securities described in this prospectus as digital securities, meaning the securities will be uncertificated securities, the ownership and transfer of which are recorded on a cryptographically-secured distributed ledger system using technology similar to (or the same as) the distributed ledger technology used for trading digital currencies."
Details of how this would be achieved have now emerged, with Wired reporting that last autumn a stake was acquired in SEC-regulated PRO Securities, which has now amended its charter to say that it may handle trades in digital securities via blockchain-related technology.
Bryne has told Wired that his firm has already built the blockchain-related tech on top of PRO Securities platform and is now ready to show it to regulators.