Overstock.com's (NASDAQ: OSTK) recent SEC S-3 filing outlines an possible sidechain named tØ (T-ZERO) the technology for trading shares accompanied by a private trading system that will ultimately confirm transactions on the Blockchain.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved the filing and will allow the organization to issue new publicly traded shares of the company on the Blockchain. The actual trading of these shares will take place on an alternate trading system, defined as an ATS in the filing, and will be a closed and controlled system (no, not the private bank-string-database-thing) that will ultimately record the final ownership, and track its life-cycle, on the Blockchain (yes, the Bitcoin thing).
The digital securities will be represented by proprietary ledger balances that will be secured by a cryptographic pair of keys ... ", states the S-3 filing, and later says " .... Unless otherwise described in the applicable prospectus supplement, transactions in our digital securities on the Pro Securities ATS utilizing tØ software technology will utilize the Bitcoin blockchain as the relevant distributed ledger, thereby capitalizing on Bitcoin's established algorithm-based consensus"
Sidechain technology is a derivative of the Blockchain. The difference being that sidechains are modified to support workflow tasks in isolation of the public ledger until steps that require utility provided by the Blockchain is reached, at which point bi-directional integration with the ledger is available. In the case of tØ and Overstock that would be at the point a shares ownership would need to be confirmed and recorded on the Blockchain. This is at least what is apparent in the SEC filing.
Overstock has been working towards this since April of 2015 and it's just cool. Plain and simple. This is the type of development we need to see more of and I have the feeling this hasn't even scratched the surface of things to come.
This will most definitely be one to watch in 2016.
Story by dinbits staff
Image source: Overstock.com
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The opinions expressed by authors of articles linked, referenced, or published on dinbits.com do not necessarily express, nor are endorsed by, the opinions the management, editorial staff, members, principals, employees, volunteers, contractors, or affiliates of dinbits.com or Dinbits Media Co.