YouNow, a video platform that offers social live streaming, intends to distribute its own cryptocurrency, or Props, through leveraging the SEC’s Regulation A+ crowdfunding exemption.
An offering circular filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) explains in explicit detail the objective of the YouNow tokens to be issued under the name “PROPS.”
While the move still requires regulatory review, YouNow said in its filing that it would not raise funds or sell the tokens at the public offering. Instead, the company will reward users with its Ethereum-based ERC20 token for participating in the ecosystem.
YouNow, which reports having attracted 47 million registered users since its founding in 2011, already raised around $25 million in an unregulated token sale in late 2017. This time, however, the firm is working with securities lawyers to create a legal framework that can enable its offering to comply with SEC regulations.
Regulation A+ allows to raise up to $50 million
The company also operates a live streaming game show, dubbed WTF, which allows viewers to win cash prizes in the form of Ethereum.
Like other social networks, YouNow is aiming to create a crypto-centered media platform and a decentralized ecosystem whereby all participants hold a stake in its growth and thus earn money for their contributions to the network.
“Those users — they may be constant creators, moderators, or they may be supporting the system financially — that help grow the network can now be rewarded in a transparent and mathematical way through cryptocurrency,” Adi Sideman, YouNow founder and chief executive officer, told Reuters.
YouNow is the second Blockchain related firm to file for SEC Regulation A+ exemption, which, if granted, would allow the firm to raise up to $50 million in its token sale. Blockstack, which is building a platform for decentralized apps, was the first ever startup to file an application with the SEC to sell its tokens, called Stacks, under the Regulation A+ exemption. Blockstack intends to sell between 40 and 80 million Stacks Tokens to non-US persons in a private placement.
