Blockchain has already revolutionized many industries, from finance and security to e-governance and notary. But even more disruption is to come, as there’s still a significant gap between real and crypto economies that needs to be bridged. LAToken, the first multi-asset tokenization protocol, aims to fill the gap by creating a blockchain platform that allows its users to create and trade asset tokens whose value is linked to the price of real assets.
LAT Protocol transforms access to capital, and enables cryptocurrencies to be widely used in the real economy, making capital markets more transparent, efficient and sustainable, while removing the cost of traditional middle men and “too big to fail” institutions.
Multi-trillion dollar market
LAT Crypto Research, co-authored by 4 McKinsey and Deutsche Bank alumni, estimates that total crypto market capitalization can reach $5 trillion by 2025. The paper forecasts this growth to be mostly driven by asset tokens, accounting for at least 80% of the total market share. As their value is linked to real assets, they are less volatile than other cryptocurrencies, and more likely to be favored by the regulators as they have a valuable collateral behind them.
The founder of LAToken, Valentin Preobrazhenskiy, mentions that his goal is to tokenize and trade assets worth $1.2 trillion by 2025, “creating Nasdaq on blockchain with a wider range of tradable assets, and dramatically lower settlement time, and transaction costs.” He estimates that the turnover on the LAT Platform can exceed $14 trillion by 2025.
Chris Kacher, a renowned investor, bestselling author of “How We Made 18,000% in the Stock Market”, and one of the biggest LAToken contributors, expresses his strong belief in LAToken’s future success: “It is not hard to see how the cryptospace will be worth tens of trillions of dollars within the next several years. I believe LAToken will be a direct beneficiary of this massive expansion due to how it will position itself in the cryptospace. Its projected numbers, while seemingly unbelievable due to their sheer magnitude, actually make perfect sense given the viral, decentralized nature of the cryptospace”.
How does LAToken work?
LAToken develops an open source Liquid Asset Protocol that establishes the link between the token and the underlying asset and enables a quick creation of customized asset tokens compliant for P2P trading on the LAT platform and crypto exchanges. The protocol is tailored for any asset class and allows third parties to create new asset tokenization apps.
This protocol allows to tokenize assets worth $600 trillion, ranging from equity and commodities to real estate and even artworks, in five simple steps:
- Asset owners provide LAToken with basic information about the property, set the share they want to sell along with the repurchase date;
- LAToken representative conducts an independent appraisal of the asset;
- Asset owners sign an agreement transferring ownership rights to a LAT-certified custodian, who issues asset tokens and transfers them to the client;
- Once the asset token has been issued, it is listed on the LAT Platform, allowing bidders to pay with a vast selection of cryptocurrencies.
- On a predetermined settlement date, the previously issued tokens will be bought back from crypto holders at the current market price of the underlying asset.
The platform is already operational: it allows trading tokenized shares of Apple, Tesla, Google and other blue chips, as well as gold, oil and real estate ETFs via cryptocurrencies.
Game Changer
LAT Platform allows crypto holders to diversify a crypto portfolio with assets from all major asset classes (equity, debt, commodities, real estate, works of art) without converting to fiat with low transaction costs and maximum transparency and security. LAToken also offers a unique opportunity for crypto holders to gain exposure to the value of illiquid assets accessible only to large investors (such as real estate and artwork) and thus increase their ROI and diversify their portfolio. Fiat traders can prefer to NASDAQ due to lower transaction costs and 24/7 availability. And owners of illiquid assets, such as real estate or works of art, can tokenize them and sell by fractions with a liquidity premium estimated at 10-40%.
“LAT Platform has added tremendous value to Blockchain implementation and has revolutionized how cryptocurrency is traded in the real economy,” says Mike Jones, former CEO of MySpace. “Businesses succeed if they provide a solution to a problem which affects a large market. Finding liquidity for illiquid assets is a trillion dollar market. LAToken has found a solution to this global problem, it’s a game changer,” adds Mitchell Manoff, CEO and founder of Corinthian Partners.
LAT Token Sale
By this time, almost 50 million LAT have been sold to 9000+ community members who contributed $15,6 million during the first rounds of Token Sale, and $25 million of contributions are expected to be received in the next rounds. As of now, LAToken is #1 in terms of capital raised among asset tokenization platforms and is currently finalizing negotiations with 4 major crypto exchanges to list LAT.
LAT is used to pay for the LAT platform services, such as assets tokenization, KYC, transactions etc. As a utility token, it is compliant with all the regulations and available for US contributors. This idea is well-summarized in TechCrunch by Flight Ventures’ Gil Penchina.