ReachExtra
The new Cyberworld, its FinTech systems, and the ephemeral spheres of tokens and crypto-currencies have opened a potential Aladin’s cave to start-ups and entrepreneurs seeking to expand existing businesses – opening the doors to swift access to injections of capital.
That was the shared message of two of Gibraltar’s major players in Gibraltar’s financial services industries – Nick Cowan, CE) and founder of Gibraltar’s Stock Exchange (GSX) and James Lasry chairman of the Gibraltar Funds and Investment Association and wet-nurse at the birth of the Rock’s funds sector more than a decade ago.
The influential pair were joint guests at the November ‘fireside chat’ – the 23rd of these monthly events organised by Denise Matthews of StartupGrind at the World Trade Centre, in which she quizzes leading figures in the Rock’s financial hierarchy about themselves and their work.
By coincidence the November ‘chat’ followed twin announcements by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) earlier in the day prompting smiles of delight from both men – that, after a year’s probing by the Commission Cowan’s GSX subsidiary the Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange (GBX), had been granted a full licence; and that a full license had been granted to the world’s first fully regulated crypto-currency fund, put together by members of Lasry’s team at Hassans.
The Commission’s licensing of the token sale platform and Digital Asset Exchange came after ‘a rigorous application process’ and has made GSX the world’s first stock exchange to own a fully regulated blockchain exchange, according to Cowan.
Initially called in as a consultant to the exchange, Cowan took it over when the original promoter decided not to go ahead, he told the ‘chat’ audience. ‘We wanted to change and disrupt the way that capital markets work.’
It soon became clear that token sales were a way to raise funds quickly and that it was cheaper and easier – and involved fewer staff – without the need to go to traditional investors. Through the internet, a new world of potential investors became available to start-ups and others seeking to raise capital.
A measure of the success of this policy is the groh of the business in the past year – from a staff of ten in Gibraltar and London to a current level of more than 100 in offices not only here and in the UK but in Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai and Japan.
‘The awarding of the GBX licence is further evidence of the effective collaboration taking place between the public and private sectors in Gibraltar that is making this jurisdiction a force to be reckoned with in the global blockchain industry,’ Commerce Minister Albert Isola was to comment later.
RockCyph3r Fund, which has a $200 million target and has already attracted substantial investment, is the first Experienced Investor Fund set up with a complete multi-strategy focus on crypto-currencies. Its approval came only a fortnight after the GFIA launched the world’s first Code of Conduct for Crypto Funds.
Gibraltar had an ‘eco-system very friendly to cypto-currencies’ and the Rock had an advantage in that it offers ccess to banks which are sympathetic to the non-fiat assets.
