NEM Ventures Invests in Wave Financial Group

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Building on our existing partnership, NEM Ventures is pleased to announce its USD $250,000 investment in Wave Financial Group (Wave), a California Registered Investment Advisory digital asset manager, which offers managed digital asset exposure across multiple funds to high net worth, institutional investors and corporate treasuries.

This investment follows the launch of Wave’s Kentucky Whisky Fund, which will be launching on Symbol after the lock-up period. This fund represents up to 25,000 barrels of 2020-vintage bourbon and rye whisky, from the Kentucky-based Wilderness Trail Distillery, allowing investors to purchase asset-backed tokens linked to an estimated inventory of three hundred and thirty thousand bottles of bourbon barrelled this year, and more next year.

The fund opened for subscriptions in July and will close for subscriptions at the end of 2020. It is open to non-US and accredited US investors following Reg A (non-accredited, non-US investors) and Reg D (accredited US investors) SEC exemptions.

Wave has also been instrumental in introducing NEM Group to Propine, a full end-to-end securities issuance platform with fully compliant custody services to ensure safe token maintenance and delivery. This resulted in a mutual collaboration to provide asset tokenization on the Symbol platform. This integration was successfully completed in October 2020, ahead of the Symbol launch.

Wave is led by a team of highly experienced financial services professionals, providing investable funds via their diverse investment strategies applied to digital assets and tokenized real assets. Wave also offers separate managed accounts for HNWIs, family offices, and corporate treasuries seeking tailored digital asset exposure, treasury management services, and early stage venture capital and strategic consultation to the digital asset ecosystem. Earlier this month, Wave was awarded TADS Best in Class Asset Backed Tokens Award at the Hong Kong Blockchain Week. Wave Financial was founded in 2018 by David Siemer who is also the founder of Wavemaker Partners, a half billion dollar AUM early stage VC firm, and a technology-focused investment bank, Siemer & Associates LLC, which he sold to CEC Capital in 2016.

The Kentucky Whisky Fund is a big step for the ecosystem and represents a number of firsts for Symbol: the first publicly committed security token offering (STO) on the platform, the first fund to leverage the Propine integration and the first digital asset backed by Kentucky Whisky.

Wave has made several other introductions to leading STO issuance and custody platforms over the past few months and conversations are ongoing for other integrations. The alignment with the NEM ecosystem (and others) is clear and we look forward to deepening our mutually beneficial collaborations with Wave in the future!