Shipowner.io was launched Friday claiming to be the world’s first distributed ledger platform for participation in capital financing of assets and services in the maritime industry.
“Anyone, anywhere at any time can participate in any part of the capital structure backed by real world maritime assets and services,” the team behind the new shipping blockchain initiative wrote in a release.
Shipowner.io has been developed by the AlphaSeas Group, led by Mitul Dave, whose past employment included stints at DVB bank and GE Capital.
Access to this platform is via SHIP (Shipping Industry Participation) tokens created on the Ethereum blockchain.
Participation in the new platform is broken down into very small fractions, down to as low as $100 or lower, depending on the underlying asset or service, versus traditional financing routes, which involve millions of dollars per ticket, usually provided by large liquidity providers such as banks, private debt players, high net worth individuals and other financial institutions.
The new payment method “democratizes the way ships are owned, bought, sold and operated”, the release claimed.
The team behind Shipowner.io suggest the platform aims to undo the wave of consolidation seen across so much of shipping recently, allowing the small player a level playing field versus their larger counterparts.
Shipowner.io has already secured commitments in excess of $200m for marine assets and services which are looking to raise finance via this new channel. The target is to finance $14bn of assets and services by 2023.
Great idea to be put in place asap in order to help the forecast growth of business
Hello Capt. Charpentier, indeed we are working very hard to make purchasing assets from our marketplace available to everyone as soon as possible. Our token sales will begin as early as next month. Meanwhile, the functionality of our platform continues to improve. Check out the assets listed so far at https://shipowner.io/marketplace.