It’s time asset owners embraced the blockchain.
I’m not talking about allocating to a venture-capital fund focused on blockchain projects, cryptocurrencies, and nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
I’m talking about asset owners using the blockchain to create their own investment DAO (decentralized autonomous organization).
A DAO is created by a group of people or entities seeking to achieve a specific objective or perform a specific function. It’s reminiscent of a traditional investment club — but in this case, it is built on a blockchain.
While most investors might not be familiar with DAOs, they have been around since about 2016 (and the idea seems to have its origins in a 1997 paper by German computer scientist Werner Dilger). To give you a sense of the DAO ecosystem, DeepDAO, a dedicated DAO analytics firm, is currently tracking more than 4,800 DAOs with a total of $9.3 billion in their treasuries.
Many of these might seem a bit frivolous. After all, who wouldn’t like to be a member of BeerDAO (whose mission is to “collaborate with fellow beer lovers and beer makers to create an environment that helps all parties while providing membership benefits”) or BurgerDAO (“a community of food and Web3 enthusiasts creating the first decentralized burger franchise”)?
But there are also commercially focused DAOs. BitDAO, which aims to support builders of the decentralized economy, raised $230 million from investors such as Peter Thiel, Pantera Capital, and Dragonfly Capital and has over $2 billion in its treasury.
I believe DAOs could serve not only as a mechanism for asset owners to invest in digital innovations, but also as a solution to one of the most nettlesome problems in the asset management business.
Continue reading: https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1xwdvq02148gm/How-the-Blockchain-Could-Fix-Asset-Management
I’m not talking about allocating to a venture-capital fund focused on blockchain projects, cryptocurrencies, and nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
I’m talking about asset owners using the blockchain to create their own investment DAO (decentralized autonomous organization).
A DAO is created by a group of people or entities seeking to achieve a specific objective or perform a specific function. It’s reminiscent of a traditional investment club — but in this case, it is built on a blockchain.
While most investors might not be familiar with DAOs, they have been around since about 2016 (and the idea seems to have its origins in a 1997 paper by German computer scientist Werner Dilger). To give you a sense of the DAO ecosystem, DeepDAO, a dedicated DAO analytics firm, is currently tracking more than 4,800 DAOs with a total of $9.3 billion in their treasuries.
Many of these might seem a bit frivolous. After all, who wouldn’t like to be a member of BeerDAO (whose mission is to “collaborate with fellow beer lovers and beer makers to create an environment that helps all parties while providing membership benefits”) or BurgerDAO (“a community of food and Web3 enthusiasts creating the first decentralized burger franchise”)?
But there are also commercially focused DAOs. BitDAO, which aims to support builders of the decentralized economy, raised $230 million from investors such as Peter Thiel, Pantera Capital, and Dragonfly Capital and has over $2 billion in its treasury.
I believe DAOs could serve not only as a mechanism for asset owners to invest in digital innovations, but also as a solution to one of the most nettlesome problems in the asset management business.
Continue reading: https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1xwdvq02148gm/How-the-Blockchain-Could-Fix-Asset-Management
