From "BowieBonds" to CelebrityTokens

Securitisation and celebrity bonds are a novel idea. David Bowie was a pop music icon to many, but how many people know he was also involved in innovation in the world of finance? Back in the mid-1990s, David Bowie, along with his financial manager Bill Zysblat, and banker David Pullman came up with a new structure to generate cash from Bowie's extensive catalogue. The structure, dubbed "Bowie bonds", awarded investors a share in his future royalties for 10 years. Late last year, the start-up called Royalty Flow, filed an offering at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), outlining plans for a “mini-IPO”. Royalty Flow was selling a little more than 3.3 million shares to the public for $15 each, with a minimum investment of $2,250 and was to use the proceeds from the IPO to buy as much as 25% of Eminem music royalty rights. Welcome to the new paradigm of funding and artist-fan relationship Today, the adoption of blockchain and decentralised business structure has resulted in a slight change in the underlying terminology – tokenisation. A process of turning an asset into small blocks or tokens that may represent art and IP; films, books, music, anything and everything. By tokenising an asset, an artist is able to reach the fast growing crypto-community in a completely peer-to-peer, frictionless, non-regionalized and more importantly universal distribution environment. The creators open themselves to the power of the borderless market where anyone can buy their tokenised asset from anywhere in the world. Welcome to the new decentralized business structure which will completely revolutionise the entertainment industry and one sector that is particularly susceptible to blockchain disruption effect in the film industry. We have already witnessed the first “crypto-artist”, a Slovenian electronic music producer and DJ with a worldwide fan base whose real name is Denis Jasarevic, also known as Gramatik, launch GRMTK tokens using Tokit and SingularDTV platforms. The stakes have since been raised by the British born Hollywood actor Tamer Hassan, who is using blockchain technology to tokenise his next film, “Back in Business”. The tokens were created using Proof Suite platform which allows users to tokenize real-world assets. By tokenizing assets and selling them fractionally on the blockchain, Proof Suite platform frees up their value to be used productively and gives people more control over their assets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYC6gOpy3U0 For investors, the main issue with supporting film projects has been extremely high management fees charged by funds which, according to a specialist researcher of tax-advantaged funds, Allenbridge, can be above 20%. Blockchain will therefore empower content creators like never before and will also level the playing field for fans and investors alike. For Tamer Hassan and his team, the tokenisation may represent a leap into the unknown but it will also allow them to create a film without any concessions that usually come with big ticket investors. To find out more about the film project, please see the token page on ProofSuite platform using this link http://bit.ly/2DkqRjm . Follow social media accounts to keep up to date with the project: https://twitter.com/AT_Crypto and https://www.instagram.com/allthingscryptocurrency/ Questions can also be sent to [email protected] Image Source: Pexels