the token economy is the next “big thing”- The Cryptonomist

LL Group (Look Lateral) is a US fintech group whose core business is the creation of new financial products based on the tokenization of alternative assets, from collectibles to sports rights, created by leveraging the infinite potential of blockchain technology. 

What is Look Lateral

Look Lateral is foremost synonymous with innovation. Born as a publishing company, Look Lateral, driven by passion and enthusiasm, soon expanded to the art market, grasping its shortcomings and proposing, among the first, alternative sales solutions and channels, linked to the web and the synergy between the digital and traditional markets, essentially represented by the main international art fairs. 

It is a challenge to bring technology to a hyper-traditionalist sector like art, which Look Lateral has pursued with determination, paving the way for many other companies, which have recognized its potential.

In 2016, Look Lateral was among the first companies to talk about NFTs and the tokenization of art-related assets, and to offer major galleries innovative systems for identifying works and certifying their provenance. 

Even in the crypto sector Look Lateral was ahead of its time, with DAO launched in December 2017 and then becoming one of the first STOs launched in the US, prepared in 2018 and actually opened in January 2019.

Along this path, which has not been easy and made rough by regulatory uncertainties and a lack of clear regulations, LL Group has consolidated its experience, identified new avenues, and found confirmation of its parent idea, namely that tokenization is the missing link between a much larger audience of investors and new sources of capital for private markets. 

The innovative technological process created over these years of work, which is now ready for launch, enables tokenization of virtually any asset and can provide greater transparency, more liquidity and lower barriers to entry than traditional markets, while also facilitating additional exchange activity through its secondary market platform.

LL Group is convinced that tokenization can represent a total paradigm shift, one that can democratize entire asset classes and open up new markets and new investment opportunities, hitherto unexplored. 

The group, in order to make maximum stability and deployment, draws on the expertise of top US and European law firms-Withers, Orrick, Lexia, Martin Davis, CMW Luxembourg.

The added value of Look Lateral‘s solution lies in the customized design of Smart Contracts, with which to create tokens endowed with deep intrinsic value. 

These include so-called “alternative digital securities”, or digital certificates/contracts that represent a portion of an underlying “alternative” asset, such as artworks. To date, the issuance and exchange of these alternative digital securities are already permitted in several jurisdictions, including Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany, which have effectively equated them with traditional financial securities. 

The hope is that this model will become mainstream within the next five years and be embraced by international regulators, thus enabling the gradual replacement of the traditional, non-digital market for financial securities in the name of greater transparency, efficiency and accessibility.

The LL Group, of which Look Lateral Inc. is the parent company, includes DEXX, SportEx, FimArt, and Lateral Editions. 

DEXX is the heart of the group, an exchange dedicated to digital assets that will land on the market by the end of the year, with the ambition of becoming the leading European platform, fully regulated by the relevant financial authorities, specializing in the tokenization of alternative assets, both existing and digital native, thus enabling their fractional ownership and trading on the secondary market through a system of liquidity pools. 

Thanks in part to its partnership with Dragonchain, a U.S. company with the largest number of patents in blockchain, the platform is extremely scalable and versatile, both in terms of its simple and intuitive user experience and its B2B approach for banks and asset management companies.

SportEx (The Sport Exchange) is a fintech company that aims to create the first digital financial marketplace connected to the professional sports industry, with the goal of generating new and increased liquidity for sports clubs, horse stables, and professional athletes. 

FimArt (Financial Market of Art) is a fintech ecosystem that aims to democratize art, making it available to a wider audience and attracting fresh capital into the industry. The target is to create the first art-specific financial market, represented by an independent and regulated platform that supports the issuance and exchange of Digital Alternative Securities of artworks, operating through smart contracts, fungible tokens and NFTs. 

Finally, Lateral Edizioni is the publishing house from which the entire project began and which supports the Look Lateral ecosystem with publications and publishing activities.

Since its inception, the group has already raised over $4 million and is preparing for the next $10 million round.

As is often the case, behind such a serious and structured project there are people of tremendous international experience and expertise, including the former head of ArtBasel, the former CEO of the Canadian Stock Exchange, the former CEO of Walt Disney Italy, the co-inventor of the VIX index, and the Vice President of marketing at Amazon, an investor and Advisor to Look Lateral.