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NYSE Parent ICE Takes Stake in tZERO in Potential Move Toward Tokenized Stocks

ICE Chief Strategy Officer David Goone will become tZERO's CEO and will join its board of directors.

New York Stock Exchange (Shutterstock)
New York Stock Exchange (Shutterstock)

New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE) will take an ownership stake in tokenized securities venue tZERO. ICE said in an announcement on Tuesday.

  • ICE said in an announcement on Tuesday its investment will make it a "significant" minority shareholder in tZero. The announcement didn't provide the stake size or dollar value of the transaction but said there will be no financial impact to ICE or its capital return plans.
  • Other investors in tZERO include Overstock.com, which had launched tZERO; Medici Ventures, a blockchain-focused fund whose general partner is an entity affiliated with Pelion Venture Partners, and others.
  • The alternative trading system (ATS) had been looking for a buyer or partner since at least mid-2021, two people familiar with the plans told CoinDesk on June 2.
  • ICE is also majority owner of cryptocurrency exchange Bakkt, which went public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings in October.

Read more: Cryptocurrency Exchange Bakkt Falls in First Day of Trading After SPAC Deal

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Greg Ahlstrand

Originally from California, I've been Asia-based since 1999, headquartered in Hong Kong and Jakarta and traveling throughout the Asean countries, Japan, Korea, the Chinese mainland and Taiwan for stories. Made Australia a couple of times, too. I started my journalism career as a news assistant at the Fresno Bee in Central California while studying the subject in school after the Navy. I went from launching and recovering helicopters on flight decks at sea to recovering papers fresh off the printer in the Bee's basement and launching them onto the editors' desks, whose editors had long since gone home for the night. Eventually, they let me stop delivering the paper and start writing stuff in it. My first beat was night cops: liquor store robberies, gang shootings, fatal car crashes (almost always alcohol related). It was an education. I am, as implied above, a U.S. Navy veteran. I served in seagoing helicopter squadrons as an aviation anti-submarine warfare technician throughout the Asia Pacific region and the Indian Ocean. I have a significant number of sailor stories to tell. I have no significant crypto holdings. Among my hobbies are welding, building stuff, home remodelling, (or knocking a house down and starting from scratch if it's too far gone to fix), riding horses and rebuilding old tractors. So far I've done a Ford 8N and a Ford 9N. It's slow going, because I live in Hong Kong and the tractors are in California, so I only get to work on them once or twice a year, for a week or two at a time - and that was before covid. I love my Lab, Cooper, whom my neighbors asked me to adopt two years ago when they moved back to Shanghai from Hong Kong. Cooper and I actually planned the whole thing -- we've known each other almost his whole life -- but his first parents are unaware of the conspiracy; and they send him Christmas presents every year.

Greg Ahlstrand