Serica is shutting down its digital asset operations. The company announced today that it will stop offering blockchain-based versions of precious metals and hard assets. The shift represents a sharp
Serica is shutting down its digital asset operations. The company announced today that it will stop offering blockchain-based versions of precious metals and hard assets.
The shift represents a sharp turn toward healthcare technology. Serica's website now promotes plans to cut healthcare costs through blockchain, though the company has not elaborated on specifics. The homepage tagline reads "Peer-to-Peer Payment Innovation for Healthcare," a notable departure from the digital asset marketplace that defined the platform.
The marketplace remains accessible to existing users but no longer appears on the public site. Serica is asking customers to secure their holdings by December 21.
Serica launched as Digital Tangible and became the first platform to offer digital versions of physical assets on the blockchain. The company leveraged Counterparty to mint and trade these tokens, marking an early and significant implementation of Bitcoin 2.0 functionality. Other competitors have since entered the space. Uphold, formerly BitReserve, and BitGold both now operate similar marketplaces.
CEO Taariq Lewis addressed the departure without attributing it to competition. "We were fortunate to have early blockchain adopters come to us to make the impossible real: hard assets secured by the blockchain with easy peer-to-peer trading," he said. "However, we are exiting this market to identify new opportunities in fintech on which we can continue our company's growth. There are many others doing great work in this space and we think they will continue building where we have left off."
Serica is exploring health tourism as its next major direction. The company plans to simplify payment for Americans seeking affordable medical care abroad, targeting the Philippines, Singapore, and Cuba. Lewis pointed to aging baby boomers as a key market, people managing chronic illnesses that insurance won't cover.
"We are exploring a world in which access to care is not just cheaper, but much easier for those with expensive and chronic illnesses that will plague the aging baby boomer generation, but which funding resources simply will not cover," Lewis said. "We're starting where there's acute demand to make it easy to access lower cost care, globally. The blockchain will make that a possibility."
