Transforming Our Investor Experience: “Project Securities Restructuring” at Bnk To The Future

With over $600m of private equity shares under administration for our investors, we have been busy completing a project that we internally called ‘Securities Restructuring’. This project was a multi-year project that involved a complete rebuild of how we custody private equity shares for our investors. Additionally, it entailed conducting a thorough audit of every corporate action undertaken by each portfolio company throughout its lifecycle, since the inception of our investment and the holding of shares for our investors.

The purpose and goal were to:
1. Ensure investors have easy access to their investment history as their portfolio companies grow or, in some cases, face challenges, facilitating easier calculation of returns and assessment of any tax implications.
2. Streamline the process of listing shares of successful companies on our secondary market by providing comprehensive transparency on all corporate actions related to those shares.
3. Introduce dynamic share certificates containing a complete archive of all relevant actions for investors’ records. This facilitates easier participation in future corporate actions and allows for an upgrade of the user interface in the portfolio section of investors’ accounts to enhance user-friendliness.

Launching Dynamic Share Certificates: Enhancing Transparency and Investor Experience

We are pleased to announce that we have initiated the beta phase for dynamic share certificates. This testing process involves implementing Dynamic Share Certificates one portfolio company at a time, with the aim of a full rollout to all portfolio companies for all investors by the end of this year. EXODUS, our next company going public, is currently undergoing beta testing. We value your feedback and patience as we’ve completed a comprehensive audit of every corporate action for each portfolio company, ensuring accuracy and transparency for every investor on our platform.

Evolution of Bnk To The Future: Navigating The Growth Of Bitcoin Private Equity Investments

To grasp the benefits of this feature and its eventual impact on your portfolio, let’s delve into the background of how we reached this point and why we found it necessary to re-architect our entire platform to incorporate this feature.

As Bnk To The Future stands as the longest-standing company in Bitcoin and the world’s first crypto securities business, we’ve witnessed Bitcoin’s remarkable growth from $3 to over $70,000. Meanwhile, within our platform, companies listed with us, initially backed at valuations below $10 million, have now gone public with valuations exceeding $100 billion. Simultaneously, we’ve witnessed the launch of the most successful multi-billion dollar Bitcoin ETF in history.

We initially started as a regulated securities and investment platform, aiming to raise finance for Bitcoin companies at a time when venture capitalists showed little interest in our sector. Over time, we evolved, creating investment products that offered daily dividends in Bitcoin or Mining, and later expanded into staking Ethereum. This evolution prompted us to acquire additional licenses to facilitate custody, trading, and staking of virtual assets through our registered Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP). As the companies listed on our platform grew and eventually went public, we identified the need for additional licenses to enable our investors to trade public shares through our regulated investment dealer.

As investor demand grew for holding private equity in Bitcoin companies, virtual assets such as Bitcoin, ETH, and USDT, and shares in public companies within an asset protection retirement structure, we introduced our portfolio builder service. Designed for high net worth Bitcoin investors, this service provides an efficient framework for inheritance, tax, and retirement planning.

In addition, our CEO launched educational programs to empower investors in utilizing our platform to build and protect their Bitcoin wealth. These programs encompass the Bitcoin Wealth Builder Program and targeted initiatives focused on maximizing recoveries in bankrupt investments, such as Celsius. For more information on Simon Dixon’s products benefiting Bnk To The Future investors, please visit here.

BnkToTheFuture.com: Your All-In-One Bitcoin Investment Platform

Over a decade since launch, BnkToTheFuture.com is now an All-In-One Bitcoin investment platform where you can or will be able to:
• Buy, Sell, Stake & Custody Virtual Assets & Fiat Currencies like Bitcoin BTC, Ethereum ETH, Tether USDT & US Dollar USD etc.
• Buy, Sell & Custody NASDAQ traded Bitcoin Stocks, ETFs & Mutual Funds like Coinbase, Marathon & BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust etc.
• Buy, Sell & Custody Shares in Private Bitcoin Companies with illiquid Private Equity OTC Secondary Markets like shares in Circle, Kraken & BitFinex etc.
• Hold your investments in a segregated asset protection structure with retirement plan asset protection, inheritance & simplification of tax reporting in mind.

Adapting To A Substantial Increase In Investor Returns. The Evolution Of Bnk To The Future.

You can imagine we have had to adapt our technology to allow for the complete life cycle of a startup Bitcoin company like Kraken (that raised finance with us early as private equity), through to companies like Coinbase who had an early stage secondary market for their private equity on our platform before they went public on NASDAQ. 

With This In Mind We Are Proud To Introduce To All Of Our Investors – Dynamic Share Certificates.

To understand this new feature, let’s take a look at the life cycle of one of our portfolio companies – Popular crypto wallet Exodus.

Here is the growth journey that both Exodus and our investors went through on our platform since they raised finance with us in 2016:
• They raised equity finance on our platform as an early stage startup before it was easy to value the company using a convertible note loan with a valuation cap to convert to equity in the future at a valuation below $10m no matter how much the next round investors pay. This locked our investors valuation upside as an early stage investor with interest paid in shares.

• Bnk To The Future Capital SPC held these shares for our investors, who received shares in Bnk To The Future Capital Exodus SP along with a share certificate. This certificate could be downloaded at any time from our platform

• As EXODUS grew, the convertible note loan was converted into equity, effectively securing a significant valuation increase due to the valuation cap. This increase occurred as venture capitalists invested at a much higher valuation, reaching into the hundreds of millions, consequently enhancing the value of our early-stage investors’ shares.

• We enabled our investors to trade on an illiquid secondary market, where we matched them with high net worth investors on our platform who may have missed the initial round but were interested in holding it in their portfolio of Bitcoin & crypto companies. This process would update the share certificates and registrations to reflect the new ownership structure.

• Exodus prepared to go public by issuing a security token in partnership with another one of our portfolio companies, Securitize. They also decided to execute a share split, doubling the number of shares for all investors while halving the value of each share. This adjustment maintains a neutral effect on overall value but increases the number of shares available for trading.

• At the same time, Exodus offered all investors the opportunity to sell some of their shares at an approximate $750 million valuation, thereby locking in a substantial partial gain. Additionally, investors had the option to receive their dividend payments in Bitcoin, granting them the full upside of Bitcoin thereafter.

• Investors who accepted the Exodus share buyback had the flexibility to custody their Bitcoin on our platform, withdraw it to their own self-custody cold storage, or even trade it for ETH and stake it with our registered Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP).

• Investors had the choice to retain their shares or receive them as a security token, which could be traded on a security token exchange. They could hold their EXIT shares on the Exodus wallet or on our platform as they preferred.

• As the company continues to grow, they are preparing to go public on the NYSE OTC market this month in May 2024. Those who convert their ‘B shares’ into tradable ‘A shares’ will gain access to this third market for liquidity.

• Investors will seamlessly be able to custody their now publicly tradable shares with our investment dealer broker, regulated to place orders in public shares. This enables them to sell when they want to, provided there is sufficient liquidity.

• Once they sell, investors can withdraw their USD to their bank account in their local fiat currency. They can also convert them to USDT with our VASP and use them to buy Bitcoin or even ETH, while staking their ETH for weekly rewards. Alternatively, they will be able to purchase their favorite and most cost-effective Bitcoin ETF or public shares in Coinbase. They could even invest in more private equity in another early-stage pre-IPO company or startup from other investors on our secondary market.

• They can also hold these investments in a retirement plan structure for maximum asset protection and efficiency.

Streamlining Bitcoin Private Equity Investments with Dynamic Share Certificates

Our comprehensive Bitcoin investment platform now streamlines all these processes.

That’s why we’ve introduced dynamic share certificates, gradually implementing them across every portfolio company, corporate action, and investor.

The enhanced share certificate will now encompass both the dynamic history and future actions, providing you with a comprehensive overview of all activities within a single document. 

This document can be conveniently shared with your tax advisor or streamlined further using our recently introduced Recap tax software integration, giving you the flexibility to choose the level of detail.

To kickstart this initiative, we are beginning with our portfolio company, Exodus. This serves as an example of the first share certificate in our rollout plan, which will gradually extend to every portfolio company and investor over the course of the year. 

This rollout is synchronized with our ongoing securities restructuring project and private equity audit, aimed at achieving our overarching objectives of expanding secondary markets, increasing public shares, and enhancing the user interface for investor portfolios.

Thank you for taking the time to read this far. We sincerely appreciate your attention and eagerly welcome any feedback you may have.

Need Support?

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this update, our dedicated support team is here to assist you. Feel free to reach out to us anytime.