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  • Welcome to New York City.

  • The crown jewel of the real estate market.

  • Everybody wants a piece.

  • And now, thanks to blockchain technology, that may very well be possible.

  • This $36.5 million development is being sliced into digital shares, or tokenized, as it's called, so that investors around the world can own as much, or as little, as they can afford.

  • We have the typical bank financing on this project with a conventional bank, and this loan matures in January.

  • We've decided to take a right turn and tokenize the debt here on the property.

  • The construction is 95% complete, we are starting to get inspections in the next week or so.

  • We have a bank deadline on us, where we have to sell a certain amount of units or repay the entire loan by a certain date.

  • If construction's been delayed, if the market turns, if competition pops up, and we're not going to be able to hit that deadline, what do you do?

  • So by tokenizing the debt, it gives everyone breathing room to sell at a normal pace with the market instead of against it.

  • The people behind this offering reside across the East River, in that other borough.

  • Here, the blockchain start-up, Fluidity, has teamed up with broker-dealer firm, Propellor, to generate tokens by crafting smart contracts, and in so doing, they could be changing the way we all do business in the future.

  • When we started to look at the real estate industry, it's probably one of the most inefficient industries that exist currently.

  • You have a lot of middlemen, a lot of lawyers, a lot of bankers and just being able to create something that has real impact on an industry like that, I think you're looking at significant disruption.

  • But for a project determined to eliminate middlemen, there's a lot of people involved.

  • - Motivator. - Coder.

  • - I'm a lawyer. - Facilitator.

  • - Strategy. - Project Manager.

  • - Developer. - Co-founder.

  • I'm just the broker.

  • I'm a fan.

  • An important party that is absent in this equation is a bank.

  • There will not be a bank involved.

  • The process goes something like this.

  • These guys create tokens on the blockchain.

  • The tokens represent the condo unit's debt, and can be traded as private securities.

  • If token holders sell their shares, the purchaser can either preserve the tokens on the blockchain, or cash them out, thereby dissolving these tokens altogether.

  • This, theoretically, would produce more liquidity to a notoriously ill-liquid market.

  • It's a hard, asset-backed, secured loan.

  • We're taking private securities and we're putting a digital wrapper around them, which makes it easier to track and easier to transfer.

  • There's only four assets you can own in the world.

  • Stock, a bond, a currency or a commodity.

  • And we think every single one of them's gonna get digitized. Tokenize the world.

  • And that's already happening.

  • A UK company recently tokenized this Andy Warhol.

  • Now, 100 people own 31.5% of this $5.6 million painting.

  • And when it rises in value, the tokens will as well.

  • So, is the same thing happening with New York City real estate?

  • Literally, 25, 30 million people can own a piece of this at a dollar a pop.

  • When has that ever been possible?

  • Technically, it's still not possible.

  • At least, yet, that is.

  • Many hurdles remain before this becomes a democratizing force for the masses.

  • Not least of which is the fact that these tokens are only available to accredited investors, keeping the barrier of entry high. Open only to the rich.

  • But all of this is very new, and hasn't yet fully impacted the system.

  • Blockchain innovations like this one, clearly has the potential to disrupt the way we do business, and even the way we define the very things that we own.

  • You know, if there's another downturn, and banks say, "Oh, we have a hard time lending now." Okay, well, I don't need you, because I can tokenize my loan that I wanna use to buy that condo there.

  • And that's what I'm gonna do. So now we don't need banks anymore. That is what's crazy.

Welcome to New York City.

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