Announced in an interview on YouTube, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, has officially joined blockchain company EQUI Global as a co-founder. As previously covered by CryptoGlobe, rumors of Wozniak’s involvement in EQUI Capital have been swirling since August of this year (2018). In the interview, Steve explains his motivation:
I get ideas pitched to me every single day — dozens — and I am so busy with things that I love doing in my own life that I always say no, no, no. It is so rare — this is about the second time in 20 years that I actually said: yes, I want to be a part of this. I can't do 50 companies at a time like some people can. I can do about one at a time — or two — and this is the one.
On their website EQUI describes itself as “a technology focused venture capital fund.” The fund is unique in that it is a tokenized fund. This means that investors can exit at any time by selling their shares on EQUI’s Internal Exchange or third-party cryptocurrency exchanges. The website explains that:
EQUI is a tokenised fund allowing investors to exit their investment and convert their EquiUnits to EquiTokens at any point to be traded on crypto-exchanges.
When investors pledge capital to the fund, they receive EquiUnits. 1 EquiUnit can always be swapped with EQUI for 1 EquiToken. EquiUnits are “a traditional investment Fund, where investors have direct ownership units in the Fund.” EquiTokens provide “the opportunity for constant liquidity through a tokenised unit.” The EquiToken is an ERC-20 token that can be traded on exchanges such as Binance, Kucoin, and more.
Currently, investing in EQUI is only open to Accredited Investors who pass through KYC/AML background checks. It’s not clear whether EquiTokens will require background checks as well.
EQUI Capital previously planned to launch via ICO, but ultimately decided not to. Their ICO aimed to raise $75M, but was shelved after only raising $7M.
While there has been some controversy regarding the project’s legitimacy, EQUI has decided to forego the ICO and
instead cater to accredited investors. A quote on their website hopes to inspire confidence in investors:
I'm looking forward to all the great adventures we're going to have with EQUI. We're going to change the world, we're going to cause a lot of disruption and we're going to do things in different ways than they've been done before.
Wozniak has been in the cryptocurrency space for a while, and has appeared in conferences all year. Earlier in 2018, Wozniak admitted that he’s been trying to buy bitcoin since $70, but only managed to complete purchases once the price climbed to $700. He’s also been in the cryptocurrency space long enough to get scammed, havingost seven bitcoins in February due to fraud.
Featured Image Credit: Photo by “Gage Skidmore” via Flickr; licensed under “CC BY 2.0”
