tZERO and EnergyFunders Partner to Digitize $25M of Securities

Digital asset and blockchain company tZERO announced Thursday it has signed an agreement with EnergyFunders. The joint project will be geared at digitizing $25 million of equity interest in the EnergyFunders Yield Fund I. 

The funds will be used to invest in oil and gas assets within the United States. tZERO and its broker-dealer subsidiaries provide clients with a liquidity platform for private companies. Additionally, solutions are offered to issuers looking to digitize their capital table via blockchain tech and trade on an alternative trading system (ATS).

The new partnership represents EngergyFunders’s first foray into digital security, though they plan to more such projects in the future. The Texas-based company provides a platform that combines crowdfunding with the advantage of projects chosen by industry professionals.

They work with oil and gas operators and have launched more than 30 oil and gas investment funds since beginning work in 2013. 

EnergyFunders will launch its Regulation D 506(c) later this month, at which point the Yield Fund I digital security will become tradable on the tZERO ATS. The ATS will be subject to legal and regulatory due diligence, along with considerations for securities laws.

Both will offer investors secondary liquidity as a result. The digital security will be built on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain and designed to utilize tZERO’s smart contract technology.  

Speaking on behalf of EnergyFunders, CEO Laura Pommer Fidler explained that the company “strive to compound investor capital at above-market rates, which historically required tying up capital for several years in private market partnerships. tZERO’s revolutionary blockchain-based platform offers a leading regulatory-compliant, continuous, and automated trading environment for private market assets in the U.S.”

As previously reported, tZERO partnered with a real estate development company ROI Group. The two companies joined their efforts to issue the digital securities at a total value of up to $50 million in a luxury hotel and residential development located in downtown Dubai.