Overstock CEO plans to sell retail business by February 2019 amid blockchain push

Overstock founder and CEO Patrick Byrne plans to sell the firm’s retail business in the forthcoming months and focus on blockchain technology, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The comments follow Byrne selling off 10 percent of his shares in September. He has been reportedly planning to sell the retail business since 2017. Byrne has now said that sale could be finalized as soon as February 2019, but did not disclose any of the prospective buyers.

Overstock’s Blockchain Push

Founded in 2014, Medici Ventures is a wholly owned subsidiary of Overstock.com that aims to leverage blockchain technology to solve real-world problems with transparent, efficient and secure solutions. It has a growing portfolio of groundbreaking blockchain-focused investments, which includes Factom, Symbiont, Bitsy, Ripio, Bitt and others.

That said, Medici Ventures’ figures are not much encouraging – the company lost $39 million through the first nine months of this year, following a $22 million loss in 2017.

Medici Ventures is the parent company of tZero, a fintech company that seeks to bring greater efficiency and transparency to capital markets through the integration of blockchain technology.

In June 2015, Byrne made the first purchase of the world's first “cryptobond” for $500,000. The issuance was powered by the tZero blockchain platform. The term ‘tZero’ refers to the fact that trades on the system securely settle same day, as opposed to three days later – or what Wall Street traders refer to as, "T+3".

However, it’s been three years now and tZero hasn’t been commercially launched and is burning millions of dollars a month, the WSJ said.

“I don’t care whether tZero is losing $2 million a month,” Byrne said. “We think we’ve got cold fusion on the blockchain side.”

Earlier this year, tZero raised $134 million in its security token offering. The tZero platform is expected to go live in the first quarter, the company said.

In December 2017, Byrne announced a joint venture with renowned economist Hernando de Soto aimed at developing a blockchain-based global property registry system.