Overstock Issues Digital Securities on Alternative Trading System

Overstock (NASDAQ:OSTK), an online retail company focused on blockchain announced that it has issued digital preferred shares under the ticker OSTKO. The new shares will be traded on an alternative trading system run by its subsidiary, PRO Securities.

As quoted in the press release:

OSTKO became available for trading on the PRO Securities ATS on Thursday, June 27, 2019 — the same platform on which tZERO’s security tokens began to trade among accredited investors earlier this year. Investors must have an active brokerage account with broker-dealer Dinosaur Financial Group in order to purchase and trade OSTKO on the ATS. For such accounts, clearing and custody will be provided by Electronic Transaction Clearing and the transfer agent for OSTKO will be Computershare.

Overstock.com, Inc.’s Common Stock, OSTK, and its Series B Preferred Stock, OSTBP, will continue to trade on NASDAQ.

“This is quite a significant event. Followers of Overstock may remember that several years ago, I compared us to Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine, then had to give it to himself in public to convince others it was safe,” said Overstock founder and CEO Patrick M. Byrne. “Similarly, I said that as tZERO developed technology to support a legal, regulated, blockchain capital market, Overstock would be availing itself of those developing capabilities. For that reason, in April 2015, Overstock filed a shelf registration statement on Form S-3 with the SEC to register digital securities. It took a whopping legal bill, but by December 2015, the SEC declared Overstock’s shelf registration statement effective. In December 2016, Overstock issued a small amount ($11 million) of preferred securities, $2 million of which was issued in the OSTKP blockchain digital security. That has traded in minute quantities since then, but it is the first public blockchain security. Today, the majority of Series A OSTKP preferred shares have been converted into the new Digital Voting Series A-1 Preferred Stock, OSTKO, so that they can be compatible with tZERO’s latest technology. At this point, investors with brokerage accounts at Dinosaur Financial can now buy and sell this blockchain-based instrument on the ATS operated by tZERO subsidiary PRO Securities. While the numbers are not large, the historical significance of this event is hard to overstate.”

Click here to read the full press release.