ETO: Revolution or Evolution. The institutional investors' dilemma

Binance has partnered with Neufund and MSX, the recently launched subsidiary of the Malta Stock Exchange, with a plan to create the first decentralized stock exchange in Malta that will become the first end-to-end primary issuance platform for security tokens and tokenized assets.

The exact date of the launch of this exchange is still to be revealed, but there are clear indicators hinting that it’s going to happen around late 2018, when they believe to receive regulator’s approval. Roles of all parties are not disclosed yet, but it’s safe to assume that Binance is going to be responsible for the infrastructure of the exchange, because of their extensive experience in the field of crypto financial organizations.

This is not going to be the first collaboration between the crypto giant and Neufund. Binance backed “Founders”, the first decentralized bank, created by the fund.  According to the fund members, this time, this should broaden the horizons of the industry by putting the Equity Token Offerings on the massive scale.

But members of the business community has not been impressed. One of the Moon Zebra Co-founders, Markus Behman that sat down to talk with Bitnewstoday.com, seriously doubts that this will affect the cryptoindustry anyhow.

The reasons for his skepticism are understandable - there are far too many nuances and issues with it:

“For now, this won't have any recognizable impact. Also because the much celebrated DLT legislation in Malta still has many problems, e.g. it's unfriendly to small DLT companies and it prohibits developers and innovation through insane fees, and is just a money-making machine for lawyers.

For traditional investors in Malta, this is still completely uninteresting as institutional investors look for fixed returns and high dividends. They are very risk-averse and prefer safe and reliable income - they don't invest in anything that doesn't pay a safe dividend every year”.

But according to Markus’s own words the project does have potential; if the regulator is going to change its position towards the small business - everything can change.

“Should the DLT legislation change and become friendlier to small businesses, then more companies and investors might try this solution, and if it works, it will definitely have an impact on all markets on a global scale.  But this might take a few years and/or a financial crisis until it happens though”, - concluded Markus.

This is a serious issue that is becoming a hot topic in the industry, because of the unhealthy disproportion that stops blockchain from actual mass adoption. In the process of chasing the “Bigwigs” retail investors and small, innovative companies are often left behind, which harms the evolution of the crypto industry.