On 5th of August 2015, at the headquarters of NASDAQ, Patrick Byrne, the chief executive officer of Overstock has unveiled the company’s most anticipated blockchain- based private and public equities trading platform – tO.com.Patrick Byrne stated, “We built a platform and we’re launching tO.com, where the trade is the settlement. That’s the big disruptive idea, the entry is both the trade and the settlement, it doesn’t have to be a separate process.

”The co- founder of tO Johnny Tobacco, Jones Day partner Lee Armstrong and the president of Overstock Stormy Simon, focused on the innovative nature of the project and praised Patrick Bryne by describing him as a maverick, visionary and philosopher.Stormy Simon stated, “We had built a system that allowed couches to be hand delivered in a box, and back then, that was a hard conversation, helping retailers see how their business would be changed in the future. Today shipping couches doesn’t feel like a big deal.”Meanwhile, on June 2015, Symbiont, a fintech company that focuses on developing the symbiotic relationship between traditional financial markets and cryptographic blockchain technology that was established on March by Counterparty and MathMoney founders create the first issuance and trading platform for smart securities that is based on blockchain technology.Mark Smith, the chief executive officer and co- founder of Symbiont stated, “We are proud to be on the leading edge of this blockchain and distributed ledger movement.With interest in distributed ledger technology growing rapidly, financial institutions are exploring how to leverage it to improve the efficiency and security of trading and processing financial transactions.

Smart Securities will ultimately change the way that financial instruments are issued, managed and traded.”Symbiont has recently completed a $1.25 million seeding funding round. The company received funds from various investors such the former chief executive officer of Citadel Derivatives Group, Matt Andresen and Duncan Niederauer, former chief executive officer at New York Stock Exchange.Mark Smith explained, “The blockchain not only has the potential to democratize markets but to drive down the cost of doing business across all sectors.”Smart securities change the way that security issuance, management, trading, and clearing and settlement takes place within global capital markets.Generally known as “smart contracts”, these contracts are programmable versions of traditional securities issued on any type of distributed ledger which includes blockchain.Once a security is issued onto the ledger, it acts automatically by eliminating traditionally manual mid- and back- office functions.