In an exclusive interview with The Tokenizer, the Easter Bunny speaks out on the revised issuance and trading procedures for easter eggs – henceforth known as Easter Tokens.
As the regulatory landscape, as well as the general knowledge of the power and potential of security and asset tokens, the Easter Bunny and his legal team today – April 1st – announced a new legal status of the iconic Easter Eggs.
The Tokenizer (TT): First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us – we understand that this must be a very busy time of the year for you. Could you please, start by explaining to our readers the reason behind these changes?
The Easter Bunny (EB): My pleasure, it is indeed a busy time, but this only highlights the need for embracing modern technology and the changes in regulations to optimize the procedures that are still very much legacy based.
TT: But why tokenization?
EB: Well, to be honest, I and my team have since we were just a startup struggled with the whole egg concept – I mean, while many of our clients and partners never question the setup, we do experience that a growing number of our clients are concerned about the provenance and origin of the eggs since they rightly observe that bunnies like myself certainly do not lay eggs. Actually, the egg was simply meant as a metaphor – a representation of the easter spirit, you know – fertility and such, but as we gradually pivoted our business to cater for the younger segment, these connotations were lost along the way.
TT: So if you just wanted to reduce confusion, why not simply change the name?
EB: As I said, the egg was indeed a representation, but also something that was widely issued, traded and collected in many different countries and jurisdictions, so we had to be careful how we classified these assets. This is why classifying them as tokens to us is the logical choice.
TT: For how long time have you been working on this change?
EB: About five or six years ago, our strategy team identified blockchain technology as holding vast potential also for our industry. While much of our foundation is still very much based on belief, we could see that a world full of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ would demand a higher degree of transparency and proof than our legacy platform was able to support. We started running our pilot project for friends and family a couple of years ago on the Blockchain, but the uncertainty around the legal status of these Easter Tokens have kept us from going public until today.
TT: So what has changed from a regulatory perspective?
EB: In 2017 and most of 2018 almost all tokens in the market were utility tokens – or tried to pretend they were utility tokens – and our legal council wisely advised us to stay out of this unregulated market as our tokens should also support trading on regulated markets. But in 2018 the SEC (The Superior Easter Commission) came up with some eggceptions to the rules that changed the market completely. These eggemptions – namely Egg-D and Egg-A – allowed us to really embrace tokenization and sets the legal foundation for the future of Easter Tokens.
TT: But is the market ready to embrace these changes?
EB: Of course, most of the unregulated that had hoped to avoid regulation altogether as well as most of the questionable ‘advisors’ that have approached us over the past year or so will likely find it difficult to continue their praxis, but the wider market seems perfectly ripe to embrace the Easter Tokens. The rules for accreditation still varies a bit from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but we believe that most will be able to obtain the Easter Tokens they want already this Easter. The secondary market sees very high demand – especially for the chocolate version of the Easter Tokens but based on quite low liquidity, as the token holders here typically are of with very little income.
TT: Thank you again for taking the time to speak with us – any final thoughts you want to share with our readers?
EB: We wholeheartedly believe that 2019 is indeed the year of tokenization, but we also see a need for further maturation of the market fuelled by increased insight and understanding, which is why I for one believe that The Tokenizer is doing a great job as a catalyst for this new industry.
More Aritcles:
Towards a European token economy – driven by the EU Commission!
VNX successfully completes Europe’s first VC deal on blockchain