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Houston blockchain-enabled investment platform gets regulatory approval
For Rashad Kurbanov, this day has been a long time coming. The founder of iownit.us has been building his digital investment platform for two years, and now the company has been approved for membership by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
As a FIRA member, IOI Capital and Markets LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of iownit.us, the company can be placement agent for digital private securities that are issued on the iownit.us platform.
The iownit.us' blockchain-backed technology allows for a more simplified and streamlined process for securities investment, making it easier on both the investors and the companies seeking investment.
"We believe our platform will reduce friction in the market and reduce costs for all market participants, while importantly providing appropriate investor protections," Kurbanov says in the release.
Kurbanov indicates in the release that the length of the approval process wasn't that surprising.
"As any new technology being introduced in financial markets, blockchain had to be thoroughly evaluated by the regulators to ensure its application in compliance with regulations that made the U.S. capital markets envy of the world," he says. "We spent a significant amount of time with FINRA and SEC Staff on productive discussions working through the use of distributed ledger technology and how it can be implemented to provide convenient yet secure platform."
Iownit.us represents a more modern approach to traditional investing processes in an increasingly digitized world.
"We are not here to 'revolutionize' investing, but we do intend to make it vastly more modern and less complicated for both issuers and investors to engage and transact," he says in the release.
In June, the company closed a $4.5 million Seed round of investment. Kurbanov said that those funds would be use to wrap up this approval process. Now that it's all squared away, the remaining funds will go toward business development and marketing initiatives and technological advancements.
