Blackmoon Claims to be First Company to Issue a Token Related to an IPO with Xiaomi Offer

Blackmoon is reporting its Xiaomi initial public offering (IPO) has been sold out. But this batch of shares are not being sold in the traditional manner as Blackmoon has tokenized the offering.

This past week, Xiaomi completed an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The offering raised $4.7 billion at a valuation of around $54 billion. Fintech Blackmoon took the opportunity to participate in the offering and then went on to tokenize the shares and enable individuals to purchase Xiaomi – crypto shares (BMxXMI).

According to an article in the South China Morning Post, buyers came from France, Germany the UK and elsewhere but the offering was blocked in Hong Kong and China as ICOs are banned in these jurisdictions. It was not clear how many shares were transferred via the Blackmoon tokenization process.

Oleg Seydak, founder and CEO of Blackmoon, released a comment on the offering;

“We have made it happen. The opportunity to participate in the performance of Xiaomi shares has not been overlooked by blockchain investors. To have achieved this is great news not just for the company but for the industry as a whole because it shows that with every day, more, and more blockchain investors begin to realize that their investment opportunities are not limited to the crypto universe.”

While Xiaomi did not officially sanction the share tokenization of their IPO it does not appear the company was overly concerned about the Blackmoon crypto offer. Blackmoon’s Chief Operating Officer, Sergey Vasin stated;

“According to the original article published in the South China Morning Post, the Xiaomi spokesperson simply said that Xiaomi and Blackmoon are not affiliated companies. Blackmoon has never made any claims to the contrary.”

So is this little more than a promotional stunt?

Perhaps. The tokenization of securities is already in process with multiple platforms working to facilitate blockchain based securities that streamline the issuance, and management, of the investment process. Blackmoon may claim to be the first company to issue a token related to an IPO in this way but the real evolution will be when securities start as a smart contract and remain that way.