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Crowdfunding Platform For Alternative Investments Supervest Now Seeking Funds Through SeedInvest Round

Supervest, a U.S. crowdfunding platform specifically for alternative investments, is now seeking funds through its crowdfunding campaign on SeedInvest. The company describes itself as a technology platform created to bridge the gap between brokers, syndicates, and funding companies.

“Supervest is an online, crowd-funding platform that allows accredited investors to tap into the high yield potential of Merchant Cash Advance (MCA).   We connect our high-quality community of investors with our stable of funding partners in order to provide working capital to small businesses across the United States. The ability to invest, participate, or syndicate in this area has been traditionally reserved for the merchant cash advance companies and ‘insiders’ of these companies.  We have leveraged our experience and knowledge of the industry with the power of our fully integrated platform to give our funding partners the ability to tap into a stream of  capital to fund qualified merchants.”

Supervest further revealed that ots proprietary technology allows its investors to target the businesses, credit quality, and terms of the opportunities they wish to participate in.

“Additionally, our funding partners can tap into our data and use our artificial intelligence to help determine how to better price their deals.”

Supervest is offering securities under both Regulation D and Regulation CF through SI Securities, LLC (SI Securities). The company added:

“Investments made under both Regulation D and Regulation CF involve a high degree of risk and those investors who cannot afford to lose their entire investment should not invest. Furthermore, this profile may contain forward-looking statements and information relating to, among other things, the company, its business plan and strategy, and its industry.”

So far, Supervest has raised nearly $150,000 through its SeedInvest round, which is set to close at the end of April.

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Fidelity’s Tom Jessop says crypto has hit a ‘tipping point’

Executives at investment giant Fidelity are confident that cryptocurrency market momentum will continue for the foreseeable future.

Speaking to MarketWatch on April 8, Tom Jessop who heads the investment firm’s crypto division said that he believes crypto has opened a new chapter in traditional finance circles and things have reached a tipping point for the industry.

Jessop stated that the maturation and adoption of crypto assets as an investment class will continue at a rapid pace in the coming years. There are a number of reasons according to the finance manager, one of which is extremely low interest rates in traditional finance.

This, coupled with an environment stimulated by monetary policies, has driven momentum for crypto markets. The Fidelity executive said that this environment is unlikely to change any time soon:

“I think we’ve reached a tipping point. I think you’ve had the accumulated experience of now roughly 12 years of the Bitcoin blockchain being operative since the genesis block in early 2009. And the pandemic, quite frankly, was a catalyst for institutional adoption, and specifically Bitcoin and the narrative, or use-case, around digital gold,”

Jessop added the narrative has been exacerbated by the unprecedented monetary stimulus from central banks and governments in response to the pandemic.

Since the pandemic began, U.S. stimulus packages have topped $6 trillion with much of that money being freshly minted by the Federal Reserve.

Jessop is not the only finance executive to believe that Bitcoin and crypto has reached a tipping point. In early March, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz used the same phrase while commenting on the CI Galaxy Bitcoin ETF on Bloomberg:

“Bitcoin adoption has hit a tipping point and investors don’t want to sit on the sidelines,”

On March 24, Fidelity filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to list a new Bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF). The Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust aims to track the asset’s daily performance using the Fidelity Bitcoin Index PR, an index derived from several price feeds.

Analyst at CFRA Research, VanEck, and Fidelity Investments, Todd Rosenbluth, opined that the SEC is likely to approve an ETF in the coming year or two.

Fidelity created the digital asset unit in 2019 and has been integrating digital assets into traditional investment portfolios ever since.

Fidelity’s Tom Jessop says crypto has hit a ‘tipping point’

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Former SEC chair Jay Clayton tips new Bitcoin regulations are coming

Former US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Jay Clayton has stated that Bitcoin has not been classified as a security for a long time.

But speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box on March 31, Clayton warned that its status as a non-security still does not protect it from the imposition of new regulations which, he warned, could be coming soon.

Host Andrew Ross Sorkin pointed out that under Clayton’s watch the SEC did not take a position on Bitcoin regulation. Clayton responded that was because the asset was declared not to be a security before he even took up his position as the head of the regulatory body.

“Bitcoin was decided to be not a security before the time I got to the SEC. Therefore, the SEC’s jurisdiction over Bitcoin was rather indirect.”

Clayton has remained in the industry following his departure from the SEC in December 2020 and currently advises One River Asset Management on cryptocurrencies.

Although he professes not to have any special insights into what new laws are coming from his time heading up the SEC, he believes the regulatory environment is due for a shake up.

“Where digital assets land at the end of the day […] will be driven in part by regulation—both domestic and international—and I expect, and I’m speaking as a citizen now, that regulation will come in this area both directly and indirectly whether it’s through how these are held at banks, security accounts, taxation and the like. We will see this regulatory environment evolve.”

Clayton’s comments come just a week after billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio warned that the U.S. may ban Bitcoin outright just as they did with gold in the 1930s.

His comments about Bitcoin’s status as a non-security are also interesting in light of Ripple’s appeals to the SEC for documents from the agency to determine how exactly it came to the conclusion that Bitcoin and Ethereum were not securities.

The company and its backers have repeatedly argued that XRP is not a security however the SEC believes it is markedly different due to being morcentralized. Former SEC attorney Marc Powers told Cointelegraph that the agency is executing significant overreach in its case against Ripple and its executives.

Former SEC chair Jay Clayton tips new Bitcoin regulations are coming

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Avanti Financial raises $37 million to launch institutional crypto bank

The Avanti Financial Group has announced that it has raised $37 million in a Series A round, bringing the company closer to launch as a digital asset bank.

In a March 25 announcement, Avanti stated that it will use the proceeds to fund the required regulatory capital needed for launch, in addition to funding development and other operating expenses. The round brings the total amount raised to $44 million.

Participants in the round are a who’s who of institutional investors including Coinbase Ventures, Binance.US, Morgan Creek Digital, Madison Paige Ventures, AP Capital, and Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, in addition to individuals including Trace Mayer and some of Avanti’s executives and directors. The University of Wyoming Foundation also contributed to the funding round.

Avanti was founded in 2020 as a Wyoming bank engineered to serve as a regulatory compliant bridge between U.S. dollar payments systems and digital assets. The firm first gained bank charter status from the state of Wyoming in October 2020 and was the second crypto company to become a bank after Kraken Financial which received the bank charter in September of the same year.

Founder and CEO of Avanti Financial, Caitlin Long, stated that the firm has received more than 2,500 inbound customer inquiries since announcing its bank charter approval and looks forward to starting to serve clients later this year. She did not reveal any details about a launch date but mentioned that a fully regulated dollar-pegged stablecoin was in the pipeline.

“Our roadmap includes offering API-based U.S. dollar payment services for wires, ACH and SWIFT; issuance of our tokenized, programmable U.S. dollar called Avit; and custody and on-/off-ramp services for bitcoin and other digital assets.”

In an interview with Cointelegraph in September 2020, Caitlin Long confirmed that Avanti has no intentions of becoming an exchange and will be for institutional investors only.

Early Bitcoin adopter and entrepreneur Trace Mayer, who formed the consortium that led Avanti’s Series A, stated that Avanti is extremely well-positioned to address the need for legally compliant operators in the digital asset industry as markets mature.

Avanti Financial raises $37 million to launch institutional crypto bank

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