Swarm, the platform that tokenizes securities, has announced that it will offer token issuers free issuance of their security tokens. The tokenization of assets is a rapidly growing niche in the crypto space that lets users buy fractional amounts of a security and earn interest from it.
This news coincides with Swarm’s introduction of a fiat gateway. They recently announced an integration with global payments specialist Mercury-FX, which allows investors to invest in security tokens using over 30 fiat currencies.
Mercury-FX is also a participant on Ripple’s RippleNet, a cross-border payments solution.
Philipp Pieper, co-founder and CEO of Swarm, notes that the free tokenization of assets would help scale the platform for global adoption:
In the year since Swarm launched, we have seen overwhelming global demand from projects seeking to issue digital securities. We’ve also seen significant barriers in the cost and complexity of compliant issuance solutions. To meet that demand and scale the adoption of digital securities, we have designed a way to not only make tokenization free, but to reward token issuers in the process.
The above-mentioned “reward” for token issuers is due to Swarm’s staking model.
As Levent Süer of Fine Art Digital / XBlocks, which successfully issued TheArtToken on Swarm, put it:
Their stake-to-issue model not only gives us skin in the game, but the extra incentive of staking rewards means that in addition to paying no fees, we now earn SWM each month.
Swarm is intent on making asset tokenization as seamless and simple as possible for investors. A nonprofit based out of California, the project’s Market Access Protocol (MAP) is open-source and driven by the principles of inclusion and disintermediation.
The Tokenization of Real-World Assets is On the Rise
Cryptocurrency is still in the midst of evolving, and startups across the world are discovering innovative and disruptive ways of implementing the technology. One such development, the tokenization of traditional financial assets like real estate and gold, is a trend that is rapidly gaining adoption.
There are several reasons for the emergence of this trend: both gold and real estate are difficult to manage and purchase, being expensive and challenging in terms of upkeep. Decentralized systems allow these investments to be split into fractional amounts, letting multiple users make much more affordable purchases of the asset and reap profit from it.
Thus, a large property in a lucrative area can be purchased by a group of people in a crowdfunding-like manner that can make the whole process more accessible to the small investor.
Projects such as TheArtToken, which launched on the Swarm platform, have already accomplished this.
The project soared past its first funding goal of $5 million on the platform — now past its $16 million minimum funding amount — for its goal of tokenizing artwork, which is a highly stable investment class. It has roped in several art-industry partners, including Helvetia, Christie’s and Galerie.
Securities launched on the Swarm platform utilize Swarm’s own protocol, the SRC20, which is compliant with all regulations.
With the new no-fee issuance of securities on the platform, Swarm’s plan to offer investors across the world a wide variety of tokenized assets is only more likely to succeed.
