Carlos Domingo (pictured), chief new business and innovation officer for Dubai-based telecommunications company Du, has co-founded a venture capital fund called Spice Venture Capital.
Spice has launched an initial coin offering (ICO) based on the Ethereum blockchain to secure the funds it requires to invest. The virtual currency model means backers are not limited by fixed terms and can instead trade their position, with the owner accessing proceeds from exits.
Dominigo, who left last month to co-found Spice, joined Du in 2015 after a year at telecom group Telefonica as CEO of new business and innovation.
Tal Elyashiv, co-founder and managing partner at Spice VC, told VentureBeat: “Unlike most ICOs, because we are a fund, we took the proactive approach of defining ourselves as a security, and building the regulatory compliance infrastructure as a traditional fund under current regulations.
“For example, in the US we will only accept a limited number of accredited investors under Reg D. Rule 506(c), which puts us in full compliance, and we took similar measures in other countries, so that we operate as a normal fund, only with digital tokens instead of paper shares.
“We see this is the beginning of the transition of all securities from analogue to digital, a move which we believe is inevitable.”