Gu Yanxi: The tokenization of real estate in the United States will lead the world and become the world's first digital asset in circulation and transactions

The current encrypted digital currencies represented by Bitcoin and Ethereum are essentially virtual digital assets. Their value is entirely the result of market consensus through transactions. These encrypted digital currencies themselves are not backed by any underlying assets. Although they have a very high trading volume around the world and have formed a very high market value through transactions, these virtual digital assets have not had any impact on the real economy.

Another rapidly developing digital financial product is digital currency. The digital currencies currently circulating in the market are digital stablecoins based on a single legal currency. Currently, this type of digital currency in the market is based on the US dollar, such as USDT, USDC, PAX, GUSD, TUSD and the upcoming Libra digital dollar stable currency. Therefore, from the perspective of digital financial products, encrypted digital currencies that are not linked to any real assets and digital stablecoins based on existing legal currencies have appeared in the market. In terms of the digitization of financial products, what has not yet appeared is the digital form based on physical assets, or tokenized assets. Among all the various asset types at present, I think the physical asset that is most likely to be tokenized first is real estate. And the first area to realize this must be real estate in the United States.

Gu Yanxi: The demand for BTC leads to an increase in USDT, and most of the Diem USD will flow into BTC: On February 13, Gu Yanxi, the founder of the American Liyan Consulting Company, tweeted that the demand for BTC led to an increase in USDT, not the other way around. From 2021 onwards, compliant USD stablecoins will grow rapidly. If anything happens to USDT, this will continue to sustain the growth of BTC, plus, a large part of Diem USD will flow into BTC. [2021/2/13 19:40:37]

First of all, in terms of market demand, real estate in the United States is the same as real estate anywhere else in the world, and its transaction circulation is very inconvenient. For ordinary investors, they cannot directly participate in the partial ownership of a commercial real estate, nor can they directly participate in the transaction of commercial real estate. Even when a real estate transaction is in circulation, its transaction process is very cumbersome, and it takes days or weeks to complete the transaction process. Due to the inconvenient circulation of transactions, a large amount of funds are locked in real estate, and the efficiency of the use of funds in this regard is very low. The real estate asset class is in stark contrast to the corporate equity asset class. The company's equity has very strong liquidity, and ordinary investors can participate in the transaction of the company's equity.

Gu Yanxi: The investment views and decisions of the founder of Bridgewater Fund on BTC are not applicable to ordinary investors: On February 1, Gu Yanxi, a researcher of blockchain and encrypted digital assets, published a column saying that the current market value of Bitcoin The total amount and compliance status are not suitable for Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Fund, as his main investment product. But that doesn't mean the average investor makes the same investment decisions based on his opinion. On the contrary, because the investment decisions of ordinary investors are more free and flexible, they can invest in some early but promising products, such as Bitcoin, before him. He pointed out in the article that Ray Dalio listed three risk factors for Bitcoin, namely volatility, regulatory risk and liquidity. These three factors are the main obstacles preventing Bridgewater and its clients from investing in Bitcoin. Gu Yanxi believes that among these three factors, financial regulators around the world will definitely cooperate to further regulate Bitcoin transactions. But these regulatory measures will regulate the bitcoin market and promote bitcoin as a mainstream trading product. As a result, the liquidity of Bitcoin transactions will be greatly improved, and the volatility will be correspondingly reduced. This therefore makes it easier for asset managers like Bridgewater to start investing in Bitcoin. For ordinary investors, it is possible to obtain the value-added income of this part of assets by holding Bitcoin before institutions such as Bridgewater Fund. Finally, Gu Yanxi also said that as the pioneer and leader of encrypted digital assets, Bitcoin has an irreplaceable position, and this position will only become stronger. For investors, this directly affects the proportion of Bitcoin in their investment portfolio. If an investor is right about Bitcoin's status, it will invest more of its money in Bitcoin rather than diversify its funds into other cryptocurrencies. [2021/2/1 18:34:30]

One of the main reasons why funds in real estate cannot be circulated conveniently is the weakness of current technical support. The securities trading market based on the centralized computing system can only support asset types such as stocks. The real estate is characterized by a small size and a small number of asset units that can be subdivided. Therefore, the number of investors who can hold this asset is small, and the demand for trading assets of a single size in the secondary market is small. Such characteristics are not well supported by centralized trading systems, and the cost of providing transaction service functions in this area is too high.

Gu Yanxi: It is expected that the US encrypted digital financial market will develop faster: On November 11, Gu Yanxi, a researcher of blockchain and encrypted digital assets, published a column saying that the newly elected US President Biden plans to invite Gary Gensler Acted as his advisor on the regulation of U.S. financial markets. If this is the case, then the encrypted digital financial market in the United States is expected to develop faster. Gary Gensler has a very objective attitude towards blockchain and cryptocurrencies. [2020/11/11 12:15:55]

The emergence of blockchain technology is fundamentally changing the existing securities market (see my related article). An important change in this regard is the ability to make assets into small transaction units. Since many tasks in the life cycle of digital assets can be completed through blockchain technology, the cost in this area is greatly reduced. More asset types can be traded and circulated in this way. For real estate, the equity of a single real estate with a volume of several million dollars can be made into standard small transaction units in the secondary market for trading and circulation in this way.

Voice | Gu Yanxi: A potential competitor of Libra is Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey: Today, at the "Huoxun Facebook Libra Week" online salon hosted by Huoxun Finance, Gu Yan, Dean of CBX Research Institute West said that in terms of potential users, Facebook does have 2.7 billion registered users worldwide, and he does have an advantage in terms of quantity. However, when it comes to digital assets, the active-zce social group for enthusiasts of encrypted digital assets is Twitter, not Facebook, and Twitter users are all over the world. If a financial application based on encrypted digital assets needs to be promoted globally, Twitter is actually more suitable for this purpose. A potential competitor of Libra's stable currency is Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and square. He has advantages in social network and currency payment, so he is likely to be a big competitor of Facebook's stable currency, and he Always been a strong fan of cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin. At the Consensus conference held in New York in May 2018, he proposed that the Internet needs its own stable digital currency. [2019/6/21]

Blockchain technology provides technical possibilities for the transaction circulation of real estate. Since 2018, some regions in the world have begun to use this method to tokenize real estate for transaction circulation. The biggest obstacles to this effort are regulatory constraints and the inadequacy of the corresponding market infrastructure. So far, progress in this area around the world has been very slow. But in this field, the U.S. market is at a leading stage of development, so it is very likely that the tokenization of U.S. real estate will be far ahead of other parts of the world.

In terms of compliance, the circulation of real estate in the US market needs to be carried out in the manner of alternative assets. This is how we generally know Reg D and Reg S. According to this regulation, real estate in the U.S. market can be tokenized, and then funds can be raised from qualified investors in the U.S. and overseas investors. The ATS system in the US market can provide trading services for these tokens. The transfer agent in the US market can provide a one-to-one correspondence between physical assets and digital tokenized assets. A new no action letter recently promulgated by the SEC agrees that ATS further simplifies the settlement method of digital assets, so this will further benefit the development of market infrastructure services in this area.

In terms of technical system support, in 2018, technology platforms that provide corresponding services began to appear in the market, such as token generation platforms for asset token generation and crowdfunding platforms for fundraising from investors. A token trading platform that provides trading services. However, in 2018, because it has just started, the cost of related services is high, and the services provided are not complete. In addition, the process of business operation is not perfect and the market awareness is low. Development did not develop.

After two years of development, the underlying technical infrastructure services have been greatly improved, and market awareness has also been greatly improved. Although the corresponding regulations have not changed, the development of this aspect in the market has started to show strong development momentum again. The product provider and market demand side of real estate tokenization have begun to make more efforts to develop this business.

In terms of real estate digital product generation, more real estate in the market is financed in this way under the premise of compliance. Some of these assets can generate an annual return of more than 10%, and the investment threshold is greatly reduced. For example, tens of thousands of dollars can participate in the purchase of such products. Such an asset type is attractive to many investors, and more importantly, they can participate.

On the buyer side of this asset type, the main buyers will not be investors in the United States, but investors outside the United States. Because according to Reg D, investors in the United States must be qualified investors. The investor base in the United States is thus very small. However, according to Reg S, there is no restriction in this regard for foreign investors in the United States. For foreign investors in the United States, it is very attractive to own real estate in the United States and obtain continuous and stable income. The issuers of the digital tokenization projects of American real estate have a very clear understanding of this, and they will also focus their marketing on overseas users in the United States.

Prior to this, in addition to conventional transaction methods, there was another way for American overseas users to invest in U.S. real estate through the investment immigration project, which is to invest in U.S. real estate through EB5. But the minimum threshold to participate is $500,000. Coupled with other costs, the investment threshold is still high. Now with the way of tokenization, the threshold for overseas investors in the United States to participate in this business is only tens of thousands of dollars. In addition, because the ATS system provides secondary market transactions for such tokens, the liquidity of this asset type has also been greatly improved compared to before. These factors are very attractive to overseas users.

In short, from the perspective of technological development, compliance requirements and market demand, real estate in the United States will be the first digital financial product to be tokenized and developed globally. Compared with the rest of the world, the US market is clearly leading the way.

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