Geoffrey Hammond on CoinGeek Backstage: Tokenizing futures fund via BSV blockchain

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Tokenization is gaining popularity in the Bitcoin and blockchain ecosystem these days due to its efficient and straightforward possession, verification, and transfer process and the fact that almost every asset deemed valuable can be tokenized, as explained by Aequantium LLC during the CoinGeek New York Conference.

Aequantium LLC is a startup futures fund manager that aims to create and issue investment tokens for investors. Its founder and manager Geoffrey Hammond joined CoinGeek Backstage reporter Nidhi Arora on the sidelines of the CoinGeek New York event to discuss the company’s vision and plans, as well as his experience attending the conference for the first time.

“I loved [the conference]. It’s been very informative and I really like to talk and present things, it’s my favorite subject,” Hammond said.

“Aequantium LLC is a startup futures fund operator. It manages futures. Futures are exchange-traded contracts settled to the prices of different commodities like traditionally agricultural commodities—corn, soybeans, wheat, precious metals, energies, those sorts of things. Financial futures were invented in the 1970s. First with currencies and then treasury bonds and stock index futures are the other popular ones. Aequantium is a fund manager that can operate one or more different commodity pools and futures funds as more or less the general partner of the funds,” he explained.

Hammond also explained Aequantium’s volatility fund, a futures fund that holds cash and other collaterals against a portfolio of exchange-traded funds (ETF) and designated contract markets. 

“So the interests that the funds issue are very traditional. They’re typical private placements for futures funds, but my novel approach was to tokenize them. I was inspired by hearing about NFTs. I heard that someone sold an NFT for $200,000, and I was like, ‘Well, why don’t I sell a fungible token based upon the participation interests in the Aqueantium volatility arbitrage fund?’ So, I started looking for different developers that would be able to produce this type of token, and I found a company out of Australia,” Hammond explained. ” I’m also Australian, so I was very impressed with the functionality as well as the speed of Tokenized and thought it to be an ideal solution for basically creating an internal control system and accounting system for the Aequantium funds,” he added. 

In September 2021, Aequantium collaborated with Tokenized to create and issue investment-related tokens and supply contract management and services. Under the terms of the agreement, Tokenized will provide smart contract management and internal control accounting solutions to the company. And all the essential records of Aequantium will be timestamped and recorded securely on the BSV blockchain. 

What is next with Aequantium LLC? According to Hammond, they are going under their final regulatory approval and disclosure with federal regulators such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and National Futures Association (NFA).

“We are going through our final regulatory approval, and the disclosures have to be approved by the federal regulators from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and National Futures Association is the designated self-regulatory organization,” he revealed. 

As for his general takeaway in attending the CoinGeek New York Conference, Hammond reminded the viewers that traditional regulated financial vehicles are the better way to hold and trade blockchain and protect its users. He also believes that there would be an increase in adoption by the traditional financial industry on different blockchain markets.

“I would say that traditionally regulated financial vehicles are the better way to hold and trade blockchain and more or less protect people. So increasingly, you’ll see more adoption by the traditional financial industry of different blockchain markets, and nobody can argue with the alpha that Bitcoin and other blockchain has produced,” Hammond said.

Watch: CoinGeek Backstage presentation, Tokenizing Equity & Debt Instruments