Spotify wants to do a direct listing of their shares to bypass Wall Street and the IPO process. Fred explains it a bit here. We need some bold public market ideas and companies. Spotify could work because they do not even need to raise capital. The shares woould get listed and trade. Of course, some investors will get their ass handed to them, but as I have been harping, we have moved too far protecting people rather than encouraging them to participate and learn.

While Wall Street and the regulators chew on Spotify…the tokens are coming.

Fred Wilson and I talked about Decentralized Startups at Stocktoberfest last month. Fred discussed that the startup funding model is shifting to raising money by issuing a cryptocurrency token via an initial cryptocurrency offering crowd sale. There is an explosion of Initial Cryptocurrency Offerings, with 300 such ICOs expected in 2017 (according to my sources). Companies are pushing ahead while regulators are wondering what to do, faced with the incredible market traction behind this phenomenon.

To bring more focus into this topic, my friend William Mougayar is organizing a one-day event, the Token Summit in New York on May 25th. It will be held at NYU Stern School of Business. In this inaugural event, William and his co-host Nick Tomaino have assembled a stellar group of 36 speakers of who’s who in this space, to explore the economics, regulation and practices around blockchain-based tokens, protocols, and crypto-assets.

If you are interested in this new asset class (Crypto-Assets),- and William thinks it has a lot of hope for getting accepted by the regulators, here is a special 20% discount code for StockTwits readers (note, it expires April 30th).