GBX is an exciting new project that we want to talk about. It is exciting because it is a subsidiary of the Gibraltar Stock Exchange. Gibraltar law has been very crypto friendly for a while, and there is even a ‘Safe Harbour’ for blockchain companies instituted in Gibraltar to help promote the industry.

So that’s already speaking to the legitimacy of the project and its backers. However, what excites us more about the project is that it aims to bring in some much needed transparency into the ICO market and help both investors and ICOs. This is needed to weed out the scams that cost investors a lot of money and help promote a more healthy ecosystem for all.

The ICO Platform from GBX

GBX is building a new ICO platform for listing new ICOs. This isn’t just any platform like a marketing platform that we see often times in the industry. This is a proper due-diligence platform that already does research into the projects. There will be strict guidelines for listing, just like how stock markets have strict guidelines for listing. Companies will need to qualify with many requirements, which will all be taken based on industry best practices.

Everything from the use of funds to the team to the jurisdictions will be looked into by GBX. It will help investors because it drastically reduces the chances of outright scams and other nasty behavior that has unfortunately become common in our space.

Also, industry self-regulation is the best defense against draconian regulation from the governments. If the industry can help weed out the bad actors and protect the rights of investors, then the investors are already protected and there is less need for external regulation.

ICO KYC and AML

Another big factor behind GBX is that many projects now require AML and KYC for their investors. This is required by law based on the jurisdiction of the project. However, many lawyers, especially in the United States, are suggesting their clients perform KYC on their investors before accepting money from them and releasing tokens to the people.

This has, as expected, become a huge problem for smaller companies because doing this level of KYC takes a lot of time and resources. They need to keep the data secure. Also, investors are rightly hesitant to give their sensitive information to all these websites. After all, anyone can lose them or get hacked and investors have no insight into data protection followed by these companies.

Therefore, having a single place of KYC helps both investors and projects. For investors, they don’t need to give their private and sensitive data to every project that may not follow good security practices. For projects, they don’t need additional costs of handling this data, which is not central to their core project or mission.

Building a Community

These are still early days, but given the friendliness of Gibraltar so far to blockchain startups, it is possible that GBX becomes a central hub for a lot of ICO activity. After all, investors want easy access to high quality projects, which GBX provides, and projects want access to capital, which GBX provides again.

We will closely watch how well this project does. If it succeeds, Gibraltar may even dethrone Switzerland as the preferred jurisdiction for token sales.

Learn more about GBX here and read the whitepaper here.

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