Connecting digital asset securities to Web 3.0
InvestaX is super excited to launch a new digital asset security tied to an NFT. We expect this to fuel a ground-breaking investment product that leverages the best of CeFi (Centralized Finance) trusted investor frameworks and DeFi (Decentralized Finance) new technology-driven investments and innovation. This also propels us further on our mission and vision to Tokenize the World.
Let’s break this down: We acquired Bored Ape #2371, a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT that belongs to the most sought-after blue-chip NFT collection to date. We then tokenized economic interests in this NFT, to which we have given the ticker symbol IXAPE, so we can share this with our community and do our part in driving innovation in the space. As part of this world-first project, we are giving away* 1000 IXAPE tokens to investors who sign up to InvestaX.io. The IXAPE tokens will also be tradable on our primary platform.
It is our honour to name BAYC #2371 Howey Tez, and he will play an instrumental role in the journey of digital securities and Web 3.0. You can read more about his story here and his mission to tokenize the world.
We believe in a decentralized world of finance and are “open-sourcing” this product so others will copy us and create more new ideas and concepts that we haven’t even thought of yet. The next generation of investment products are using smart contracts and blockchain technologies, creating immense value for those communities involved.
First, There Was Blockchain
The history of blockchain started with the launch of Bitcoin back in 2008. If you haven’t read the Bitcoin whitepaper yet, we highly suggest that you take the time to do so because what is written there is essentially what started the blockchain revolution and the digital transformation that we are still seeing today. You can read the whitepaper here. Do it!
A few years after Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the world to Bitcoin, another world-changing project was launched. We all know this today as Ethereum (Vitalik introduces it here), the world’s most widely used blockchain.
Ethereum paved the way for the different eras that redefined modern finance to flourish - from ICO to Layer 1 blockchains, Layer 1 vs Layer 2, to DeFi to DAOs and DAO ESOP, to NFTs, and now, digital asset securities.
Using blockchain and smart contracts as the underlying infrastructure to issue shares in real assets makes a world of sense, and we can see this in the benefits that digital shares have over papers shares:
Then Came Asset Tokenization
We are just at the beginning of tokenizing the world but at InvestaX, we’ve always believed that this is the future of digital finance. Therefore, even in as early as 2017, when there was still no infrastructure to do it and InvestaX was a relative newcomer to the space, we set out and made it possible to launch tokenized shares of a real estate fund because we truly believed in the value that it could bring. We were not disappointed.
Fast forward to 2022, there are now over 25 platforms offering issuance, trading, and custody solutions for digital asset securities. At this point, the market is just beginning to grasp the massive potential of tokenizing private assets, which will give them utilities only previously available to publicly traded assets, such as lending and borrowing.
Let’s get Back to Howey Tez
The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, otherwise known as BAYC, is a fascinating success story in the blockchain industry. It brought the spotlight to just some of the opportunities as to where Web 3.0 is going, and also drew mainstream attention to the NFT world and started conversations across the world on the potential of digital assets, and what we can expect down the line. Listen to Punk 6529 interview on Real Vision as he share thoughts on the now and the future of NFT, it is definitely worth listening to.
And so, 10,000 BAYC NFTs were minted in April 2021 through a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain for as low as 0.1 ETH (about USD 250 at that time). Since then, the growth of the community, the use case(s), what you can do with the IP rights attached to your Bored Ape, and the value of each NFT has literally gone galactic.
By giving community ownership to everyone involved in the project, it has catapulted the BAYC NFT collection to the top of the industry and a16z has invested huge amounts of money into the BAYC project which also includes a metaverse of course!
What makes BAYC game-changing is that essentially, you have a community-owned asset that also has value on its own, allowing you to create your own BAYC business using the “collective” brand value. The opportunities this opens are wild, which is why it wouldn't be surprising if BAYC would someday become one of the biggest brands in the world. A technology distributed, decentralized, community owned asset with its own currency, metaverse and whatever else gets developed in the future.
You can take a deep dive into what makes BAYC legendary from one of the best minds in the space, Raoul Paul, with his very insightful blog here, including the article “Why I Spent $400,000 USD on a JPEG Ape” and more. Raoul goes deeper into the “philosophy and perspective” behind the BAYC project, and we couldn’t agree more. And here is just one example of using a BAYC to build a completely different “real world” business.
The record-breaking success of the BAYC project has come at a cost to the everyday retail investor - a BAYC NFT will now set you back a staggering US$300k to US$400K minimum, while the most expensive BAYC NFT sold to date was #8817, which was purchased for US$3.4 million.
BAYC also now has their own cryptocurrency $APECOIN. We love how this is being positioned:
“APECOIN is for the web3 economy. Culture has found new expression in web3 through art, gaming, entertainment, and events. The possibilities for blockchain’s impact on culture are so endless that they can’t possibly all be predicted yet. APE is a token made to support what’s next, controlled and built on by the community. It will serve as a decentralized protocol layer for community-led initiatives that drive culture forward into the metaverse.
Tokenized Bored Ape #2371 NFT
NFTs are not necessarily securities on their own, but we’ve tokenized the economic interest of Bored Ape #2371 into a limited number of digital asset securities, a proportion of which we are giving away* to investors who sign up on the InvestaX platform. This is your chance to be part of a new investor community and learn all about distributed ledger technology, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, metaverse etc. We truly believe in giving and helping our community capture value in this new world of investing.
IXAPE holders will get an opportunity to explore an entirely new class of digital assets and participate in the potential appreciation and other financial returns associated with owning these assets. This is incredibly interesting, unprecedented, and comes with benefits for those who are IXAPE token holders, including:
- Potential Financial Distributions from Capital Gains on the Underlying NFT
- Potential Financial Distributions from Profits from other Activities related to the NFT
- Derivative Digital and non-Digital Products & Services Airdrops of Bored Ape #2371 Digital and non-Digital Products & Services
- Exclusive Membership or Community Access as InvestaX Preferred Clients
- Exclusive Perks & Promotions as InvestaX Preferred Clients
- First Right of Refusal Products
What sets IXAPE Apart
More and more NFT projects are being launched and are essentially offering assets with security features but strive to avoid dealing with the necessary regulatory requirements related to securities offerings (KYC/AML, offering and advertising restrictions, etc.).
That is not the case with the IXAPE token we have issued at InvestaX, because we are a licensed and fully compliant platform for issuing and trading digital asset securities also known as security tokens. Not only will IXAPE token holders rest easy that their asset enjoys a clear-cut distinction of being securities for legal purposes, but they also stand to benefit from the potential economic gains, along with other utility attached to the token.
The NFT boom was amazing, to say the least, and just like how cryptocurrency led to the development of digital asset securities, NFTs that started as digital collectibles are also leading the development of the security NFTs industry.
In fact, we expect more and more projects to come out down the line that attach exciting and valuable security features (income streams, royalties, profit sharing, capital appreciation etc) to their NFTs. We believe that this is a monumental shift in value creation and distribution, and we will see thousands of investment groups/managers following suit.
At InvestaX, we are excited to extend our services to the community to help drive this innovation forward – and this is just the beginning.
Join the InvestaX community now to learn, get exclusive access, and invest in the latest digital assets. This is still a very nascent niche, but it’s the early adopters who capture the most value when new technologies enter the investing world.
If you’re interested to create an NFT project that includes shares of investments/profits/other financial incentives to make your community the biggest and best in your industry, please reach out to the team and we will see how we can help.
Take web3 innovations and philosophies and combine them with digital asset securities, and we are going to see yet another explosion of value being created.
*Investors must sign up as an accredited investor at www.investax.io, pass the KYC/AML requirement, and fund their accounts with US$1 to get their IXAPE token.
At InvestaX, we offer the leading Singapore Licensed Tokenization Service-as-a-Software (SaaS) platform for Real World Asset Tokens (RWA) and Security Token Offerings (STO). We provide a one stop shop for tokenized assets for global investors, including real estate, private equity, venture, ESG, startup, private credit/debt and more. We also provide IX Swap, the first legal and compliant Automated Market Maker (AMM) for RWA and STO.
If you are interested to learn more about how you can build your business on top of our infrastructure and what we can offer you as your tokenization partner, then contact us here. Thank you.