A host of security changes at Lofty, an exciting new partnership from Rally, more StartEngine accredited offerings, and more from this week.
Lofty
There were a few announcements this week from Lofty. One good and one a bit less so.
On the positive side, Lofty launched their first vacation rental property. The luxury condo is also their first offering in Atlanta. This is a bit of a surprise given Lofty’s previous focus on older houses and less buzzy metro areas like Akron.
On the other side, Lofty is beefing up security after some users fell victim to phishing attacks. Here’s a brief overview of the changes that have been implemented:
- Mandatory password resets for all users.
- Added brute force protections. Expected to be locked out of your account for 45 minutes if you miss-type your password. The company suggests this will become less strict over time.
- The use of app-based two factor authentication is now mandatory.
- Two factor authentication will be required for buy/sell orders and fund transfers.
- If you place an order on the marketplace with fiat currency and then cancel it after funds are settled, you will no longer have access to your USDC. You’ll have to ask Lofty for a manual refund to access your funds.
Overall this serves to highlight some of the additional risks present from a crypto-based investment platform. These changes may increase the security of the platform, but they also degrade the user experience.
Rally
This week Rally announced an exciting new partnership with duPont REGISTRY to create an “Invest” product. The duPont REGISTRY is one of the most well-known luxury car publications in the world.
The partnership creates a fractional investment opportunity in the $750K offering for the ’21 Mercedes AMG GT One. Rally notes that this is just the first of many “powered by Rally” offerings coming in the future.
Take a look at Forbes’ coverage of the partnership.
StartEngine
StartEngine continues to pull in accredited offerings for well-known, late stage companies. The latest for Epic Games, the makers of the ubiquitous video game Fortnite.
This offering follows previous ones for Databricks, Discord, SpaceX, and Stripe. They’re not planning to slow down any time soon. Actually, StartEngine indicated they were planning to scale these offerings up. You can fill out this form to indicate your preferences for future StartEngine Private offerings.
Homebase
In an email to investors, Homebase announced their plans to launch their first multifamily real estate offering.
They also announced Homebase Own, a potentially interesting option for aspiring homeowners. It looks like it is a trade-off for lower home equity accrual in exchange for 0% interest rates and a 5 year term. While it sounds interesting, there are still a lot of details that are missing.
Fundrise
Fundrise shared a new update with Innovation Fund investors about their latest investment, Jetty. The fund invested $2M in the mid-stage company specializing in financial services for the real estate industry.
This is now the third investment that was made in the past few months after a more quiet period for the fund. It will be interesting to see if Fundrise continues to make investment at this same pace going forward. If they do, the fund is going to start ramping up very quickly.
FranShares
In an email to investors, FranShares shared more details about the performance of their initial Teriyaki Madness location. The Mooresville, North Carolina location totaled more than $62K in the first two weeks
They also noted that Smash My Trash was planned to soft launch in Rhode Island and New Orleans later this month.
Vint
Vint published a white paper with analysis of the major French wine regions – Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Champagne.
Over the past decade Burgundy was the best performer with the Burgundy 150 seeing a 182.5% gain. This was followed by a strong result from Champagne as well – 132.6% and surprisingly weak performance from Bordeaux at 35%.
Groundfloor
Groundfloor announced that they had crossed $500M in investment loan repayments. The press release was picked up by news outlets as well, including Yahoo Finance.
