AlphaPoint Launches Framework for Real Estate Blockchain Tokens

Crypto services firm AlphaPoint unveiled a new framework Monday aimed at supporting the launch of blockchain tokens backed by regulated assets.

Tokenized registered securities continue to be a hot topic as doubts swirl around the retail variety, and there have been a number of efforts seeking to put real estate on the blockchain.

The idea is to use blockchain as a conduit for introducing more liquidity into the real estate market.

A longstanding real estate and private equity firm, Muirfield Investment Partners, has joined with AlphaPoint in an effort to offer its investors a more easily tradeable way to participate in the property market.

"There are huge penalties of the illiquidity discount, real estate being one of them."

Thomas J. Zaccagnino, Muirfield's founder, explained that due to their illiquidity, real estate funds tend to be highly structured in ways that might not be ideal.

That's fine in normal times, but if your fund hits its deadline to exit - and it just happens to be 2008, or shortly after the US real estate market collapsed - that might not be the right time to sell for your investors.

AlphaPoint's plan is to see everything go on the blockchain.

"We can use trusted execution environments and oracles to govern what addresses these assets can be moved to and from and be able to apply the rules and smart logic onto a public blockchain or private blockchain," Telyatnikov said.

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