Real Estate tokenization feels and smells a lot like Old-fashioned Securitization
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What is securitization or rather What was securitization? The practice of pooling different types of assets, repackaging their cash flows and rights and creating new securities out of the mashed and hashed[1] results.
Asset-backed securities in the conventional financial world are still a huge asset class. What is asset-backed tokenization or rather What will asset-backed tokenization look like? What more natural than to experiment with the tokenization of Real Estate, a huge asset class that remains fairly illiquid, local, and with tons of intermediaries and information asymmetries.
Indiegogo, the international crowdfunding giant, launched the Aspen token on their platform. Investors on the Indiegogo platform globally will be able to own tokenized fractional shares of the common stock in the St. Regis Aspen Resort. The luxury hotel raised $18mil in Oct. 2018. The tokens are offered and traded on Templum Markets, broker-dealer and alternative trading system (“ATS”) registered with the SEC and FINRA.
In early 2019, it was announced that the AspenCoin will be managed by Securitize, the early pioneer or securitizing assets. The Aspencoin, a Security token offering, is being transitioned from Ethereum to the Tezos blockchain. The team behind Elevated Returns has partnered with Securitize in order to handle a pipeline of real estate tokenization projects.
Realecoin is another US real estate project focused on “taking over” Manhattan through tokenizing a Real Estate fund (a portfolio of prime real estate in NY). OpenFinance, an early-stage venture building regulated securities token exchange out of the US, has agreed to list all Securitize equity tokens and they have also announced a focus on the tokenization of REITs.
Early stage blockchain ventures focused on tokenizing real estate are preparing for launch and dealing with all the regulatory complexities.
Q1 of 2019, has seen several announcements of plans to tokenize real estate projects, especially in the US.
Inveniam Capital Partners will start tokenizing a property in downtown Miami, a WeWork-occupied building, and has three others in the pipeline.
