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IOI Capital and Markets, a broker-dealer and wholly-owned subsidiary of iownit capital and markets, Inc, has been approved as a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, aka FINRA. This allows the business to be a placement agent for digital private securities issued on the blockchain-based platform developed and operated by its parent company.

Developers of the platform have worked on it since July 2017. Co-founders Rashad Kurbanov and Hamid Gayibov launched the development of iownit.us with the goal of bringing the latest technology to private securities markets and modernizing this large segment of the financial services industry.

Private securities, also known as exempt offerings, play an important role in capital formation. They cover a range of financial instruments and issuers, from early-stage companies to large pooled investment vehicles. According to the SEC data, exempt offerings have accounted for significantly larger amounts of new capital formation compared with registered offerings in the past 10 years.

IOICM argued in its statement that the private securities market lacks a modern technology infrastructure to allocate capital efficiently, secure digital ownership records, asset lifecycle management, portfolio management and secondary trading.

The firm said iownit.us is different from other uses of blockchain technology which focus on crypto-currencies and tokens, because it is built on a permissioned, private blockchain that makes use of distributed ledger technology, while providing security and complete privacy to issuers and investors.