Online retail giant Overstock.com, Inc. has offered additional guidance in order to help rightholders and broker-dealers to successfully participate in its ongoing blockchain share rights offering process and fairly subscribe to purchase the Series A Preferred shares.
Overstock is offering up to 1 million shares of its preferred stock, and will give shareholders the opportunity to subscribe for shares of its Blockchain Voting Series A Preferred. This stock offering is unique in that it is the first ever to utilize distributed ledger technology, which enables near real time trade settlement and significant reductions in transaction costs. Overstock’s own financial technology subsidiary, t0, developed the platform on which trading will occur.
“We’re engineering an entirely new approach to finance, and as such, a steep learning curve among broker-dealers is not surprising,” said Overstock CEO Patrick M. Byrne. “We’re working with all the involved players and are confident that with just a little patience, individuals on both ends of this transaction can navigate it successfully.”
The subscription period began on November 15, 2016 and will expire on December 06, 2016. However, recent reports suggested that Overstock shareholders wanting to exercise their right to participate in the issuance of blockchain-traded Series A Preferred shares are finding their own broker-dealers are only now becoming educated on how to assist them with the subscription process.
Byrne said that beneficial holders must first complete their election for Series A Preferred shares through their broker and fund this subscription election. The broker then must enter the election on DTC's ASOP/ATOP platform and fund the election at the individual beneficial holder level. The broker then provides the VOI# from the DTC system and the eligible basic rights to each beneficial holder, directing them to www.mydigitalshares.com to complete their election and open a brokerage account with Keystone Capital. The broker will also be required to provide the same information to transfer agent, Computershare.
“If that doesn’t produce a satisfactory result, contact our information agent, Georgeson, and it will provide additional assistance,” Byrne added.
