Dan Doney is the CEO of Securrency one of the leading token issuers in the digital securities space.
You have a very distinguished career having served in various roles with NSA, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). How did you transition from working with some of the most respected intelligence agencies in the world, to launching Securrency?
I have been fortunate enough to work on some of the most advanced technology innovations with the best minds during my time at various intelligence agencies from the DIA to the FBI, providing the perfect springboard to launch Securrency. This gave me an insight into how fragmented the information transfer is between agencies and the inherent inefficiencies of centralized systems. My experience, combined with my passion for software development, and cybersecurity to artificial intelligence and dynamic asset pricing got me in front of some interesting individuals across real estate and finance who wanted to find technological solutions for widespread industry issues such as asset illiquidity. In search of a solution to these issues, I discovered blockchain technology and tokenization and recognized the huge impact it could have on financial services. Through the development of Securrency, it is our vision to transform the digital asset space using tokenization to deliver true market efficiencies.
You initially designed Securrency’s core identity server, credentialing (rules) engine, and interoperating rails in a hybrid architecture (linking on and off-chain functions). What made you choose this structure versus depending on a specific distributed ledger (blockchain) solution?
As Securrency’s market infrastructure technology is first and foremost designed to provide convenience and support to all market makers, it needed to encompass both legacy and blockchain functions to ensure the widespread participation and adoption of digital securities. Frankly, most STOs are bridges to nowhere. Without a built-out, integrated, and interoperable marketplace in which digital assets can move about, there isn’t enough back-end liquidity to make the exercise worthwhile for most issuers. We hope that this infrastructure will be transformational in the long run, but the near-term objectives are more incremental in nature. It is important to keep this in mind so we can move past the hype and toward the mature, professional adoption of these technologies.
WisdomTree Investments together with Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) and other investors invested in Securrency, as they aim to integrate blockchain technology into the exchange-traded fund (ETF) ecosystem. Could you share with us how Securrency’s technology will be integrated into ETF exchanges?
WisdomTree is a high-profile, highly-credible asset manager, and, as a strategic investor in Securrency, provides an incredible opportunity to deploy its technology into the ETF ecosystem. The bottom line is the market needs recognizable products that already enjoy substantial liquidity, so ETFs are a logical and exciting use case for our technology. Most of the ETF-related digital securities activity has been focused on cryptocurrency ETFs, and WisdomTree has been active in this space in Europe. ETFs will not only attract the large, household-name exchanges, transfer agents, and investment services providers, but will also make it easier and safer for a much broader base of investors to participate in these digital investment products.
On January 7th, Securrency announced the successful completion of a Series A raise for $17.65 Million. What are the plans for the raised funds?
Securrency plans to use its Series A funding to advance its software and platform development, integrate with strategic partners and other customers and, build out its operational structure. Thanks to the ongoing support of our strategic partners; the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, Monex Group, Inc,. RRE Ventures, Strawberry Creek Ventures, and Panthera Capital Investments, we can achieve our strategic vision and mission.
Could you tell us more about the Securrency RegManager™?
The Securrency RegManager encompasses both our Rules Engine interface and the patent-pending Compliance Aware Token framework. Our Rules Engine is a plain-language abstraction layer that allows companies and their lawyers to not only rapidly create policies but to be able to readily audit those policies and update them instantaneously. This level of convenience is essential for widespread adoption. The RegManager interface is fundamentally about providing multi-jurisdictional compliance tools and unprecedented convenience to financial services providers and market participants.
I was also interested in learning more about the Securrency InfinXchange™ and the benefits it offers?
InfinXchange is Securrency’s biggest technology IP. It’s an API library and finance ontology which maps various financial services to a set of basic functions, e.g. capital formation, payments, exchange routing, transfers, corporate actions, asset pricing, and compliant value transfer across DLT and legacy networks. It’s a plug-in framework made to be integrated with third-party service providers.
2019 was a bit slower of a year than we would have liked to see for the emergence of security tokens, do you believe that 2020 will be different?
We expect to see an acceleration in the tokenization of publicly traded assets in 2020. This, along with financial service providers partnering with emerging security token firms to tokenize institutional-grade assets will be a major trend in 2020. Tokenization platforms built by big tech firms like Microsoft and Facebook are also likely to emerge in 2020, coupled with digital asset issuances from highly trusted investment firms and asset managers.
What are some of the projects that Securrency is currently working on?
Our primary objective is to facilitate high-quality, yield-bearing token issuances as we unlock the accessibility which fuels mass global adoption of distributed ledger technology in financial services – the dream of blockchain enthusiasts for over a decade. This requires working closely with regulators, market participants, and intuitive user interfaces.
Visit Securrency or our Securrency Business Listing to learn more.
The post Dan Doney, CEO of Securrency – Interview Series appeared first on Securities.io.
