Non-fungible tokens and a new pathways for commerce:tokenization, fractional ownership and creating larger buyer pools; the new Fin-Tech keys to unlocking equity in large value asset pools

New Technologies which revolutionize commerce are famous for creating great wealth for those that monetize it. Those that recognize something’s potential frequently are the early adopters and may profit the most. A new development on Steem-Engine, the side chain on the Steem blockchain is non-fungible Tokens, which are also called NFT’s. NFT’s are a completely different type of token from Bitcoin, Steem, or any other Altcoin. Bitcoin, Steem, or any other Altcoins are technically known as fungible tokens. That word Fungible means that each Bitcoin is worth the same as any other and they are interchangeable, just like you and I can exchange dollars we have in our wallets, because they are interchangeable or the same. Non-fungible Tokens or NFT’s are different, in that each is created to be unique, to represent something unique. They can describe an entire object or a specific piece. For example an NFT could represent your entire body or a piece of it, like your right arm or left leg. The NFT for your arm would differ from the one for your leg and they would not be interchangeable, just like your arm and your leg are not interchangeable.

As you may know, non-fungible Tokens, which by definition are non-interchangeable and unique, are used in the very popular decentralized gaming application called Splinterlands. This is a playing card game similar to the Pokémon Cards, but different in that Splinterlands are digital representations, which are unique. If you own a certain card, which represents a certain character in the game you change your card by addicting things like skills, armor, weapons, and these characteristics have skill levels which can be increased. This process creates a unique card and it is represented by a non-fungible Token. You made your card and the character on it unique. The non-fungible Token contains all the information about your card and the Token represents your card. This means your card or it’s Token is an item of value, which can be traded for something else of value at an exchange instantaneously for Bitcoin or an Altcoin like Ether, Litecoin or Steem. These cards always existed in the digital realm, as computer code, but it’s only recently that they became non-fungible. This has created the possibility to sell, exchange or lease these Tokens, thus new decentralized applications or businesses were born, which facilitate buying, selling or renting these playing cards. I think it’s valuable to understand how a tool which has monetized this game can monetize other things.

If you read my article on arbitrage, you remember how I explained that by creating a general or abstract example to explain something, it makes it easier to utilize the concept to monetize other things. The data properties for Splinterlands cards are the card type, rarity, level, edition (Alpha, Beta, Promo, Reward, or Untamed), and the data properties distinguish the cards from each other. Non-fungible Tokens are encoded with the data properties these cards possess and these properties make both the cards and coins unique. But the tokens become representative of the cards and exchanging the tokens becomes the same as exchanging the tokens. If you break this process down to its components we have; first someone obtains control of a card A, at cost X and they can convey or give control of that card A to someone else for cost Y, and the difference in cost between X and Y is their profit. Now that’s the underlying concept, profit made on the difference. The details involved are obtaining, preparing the cards for exchange and safely exchanging them. The purpose of this post is to point out that there are other things of value, which people obtain control over for cost X and then convey control to someone else for cost Y and profit from the difference. These things include physical assets like rare coins, antiques, real estate properties and other unique physical items.

So now imagine, that instead of selling your car, house or piece of art using a broker, you sell them on an exchange developed specifically for those items. The objects of value are represented by non fungible tokens and they are exchanged as quickly and as easily as you buy Bitcoin. In a trustless fashion through computers and smart contracts. If you can visualize this, and understand it, you have seen the future of digital commerce. The details by which these are represented by non-fungible tokens and are exchanged by smart contracts has been worked out by a few platforms in the cryptocurrency world and Steem is one of them.Tokenize Real Estate and allow fractional ownership to create a larger pool of buyers and reduce financial risk to the buyer.

Tokenization is a new word, which describes a new way to raise money using cryptocurrency, during which the Project creator creates tokens which represent a share in a property or real estate asset, and investors trade fiat or cryptocurrency for these Tokens to secure partial ownership. This type of ownership is also called fractional ownership, which isn’t new, but the process which creates the fractional ownership is new. This new development started with 7 companies doing Tokenization in 2018 and now there are almost 100 companies providing platforms for not only real estate Tokenization, but also the Tokenization of Art. While real estate represents the worlds largest asset class, Art represents another type of asset with previously untapped Le equity. But now the famous art by Andy Warhol and Monet have been tokenized for fractional ownership, along with major real estate deals the world is taking notice.

In a nutshell, tokenization is one way to securitize real assets.
To securitize an asset means to divide it into pieces that you can sell to investors. In the same way, to “tokenize” an asset is to divide it into pieces, or “tokens”, that represent a piece of the underlying asset. They are therefore often called “security tokens”. These tokens are secured through one of the core characteristics of blockchains; “immutability” the unalterability of the ledger of a blockchain. Plus these tokens are tradeable via cryptocurrency exchanges or other Trading Systems (ATS).

Why is this important?

Real estate is the largest asset class in the world. It also is the class with the most locked up equity, as the number of singular buyers for expensive properties which cost over a million dollars is small. Then it gets smaller when you consider properties over 10, 20, 30 and 100 million dollars USD. Then narrow the field further by imposing geographic and political limitations and you have eliminated even more potential buyers. Tokenization is a way to trade beyond geographic and political barriers, as properties for sale on cryptocurrency exchanges allow a millionaire in China to buy a building in Los Angeles, Rome and in Brasília. While this allows a larger pool of millionaires, Tokenization has the potential to remove the accredited investor limitation from investing in high priced securities and a 100 million dollar asset can be cut up into 100 million pieces or tokens allowing people to purchase pieces of the asset for a dollar, which increases the number of potential buyers from 200-300 millionaires to 300 million people in the US alone with a few dollars of disposable income. Think about that for a second. One of the most important things Amazon did was create country wide markets for products made in singular areas. Products made in small towns of 10,000 people sudden had their potential market increase from 10,000 to 300 million. The result is Amazon is the second company in history to reach a market cap of one trillion.

Tokenization and Fractional Ownership increases the pool of potential buyers.
It’s democratizing real estate investments beyond REITs (real estate investment trusts). The future of commerce was the World Wide Web because of expanding markets, now it’s world wide Web 2.0, with decentralized social media and decentralized commerce with smart contracts and Tokenization playing a big role. Steemit and Steem/Steem Engine have the capability to be part of this “next big thing”. As @theycallmedan says: “we are were the ball is going” we are ahead of time here. You need to learn about these things and participate, as fortunes and legacies can be made, plus tru freedom can be achieved.

Tokenization platform in the real world, doing business now.

Platforms performing tokenization to unlock equity in hard assets

There several platforms in countries around the world which allows you to convert assets your stocks, bonds, treasury notes and real estate to non-fungible tokens, which are digital representations of unique items, either singularly as in one token or as a large group of tokens, representing fractional ownership, as in 1000 people contributing 1000 dollars apiece to own a million dollar piece of art and each has an equal share of the art and its appreciation, while the owner gets the cash. Then using these tokens as collateral for loans you can access part of your equity without selling the asset and maintaining 100% control or through selling the tokens and providing fractional ownership and selling just part of the asset, and this allows you to keep the majority of the tokens to maintain control over the asset. This platform and others like it have made theory real. And the movement towards this blockchain based finance continues.

List

Centrifuge
This is an asset tokenization platform which specializes in assisting it’s customers convert real world assets into nonfungible tokens so the assets can enter the blockchain universe through Tokenization. Then these assets can be used as collateral for lending and other “DeFi” or decentralized finance uses. source Centrifuge is used by its customers for the tokenization, underwriting, and securitization of all kinds of documents (invoices, mortgages, other “contracts”, etc) to exchange their data in a provable, unalterable way, and finally provide financing. source Centrifuge is a two-layer solution:
The first layer is the Centrifuge peer-to-peer network for private, secure data exchange. The second layer is where the smart contracts deployed on Ethereum that represent business identities, document hashes and most importantly the “Business NFTs” to represent documents live, and in a form which makes them financeable via MakerDAO, Compound, or others. source >Additionally, they recently launched a platform known as Tinlake, which allows the tokenization and pooling of those NFTs in an easy, standardized way< source.
The cofounder and CTO of Centrifuge is Philip Stehlik, formerly CTO of Taulia, which is one of the largest providers of financial services for the Fortune 500 in the US, with the platform transacting many billions of dollars of transactions yearly per Mr. Stehlik.
source

These are Tokenization platforms in countries all over the world, so if they are in your country they will be complaint source

BANKEX
They use a proof-of-asset protocol with a goal of creating infrastructure for the decentralization of the world's capital markets. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 2016 |Jurisdiction: USA

Partners
A one-stop agency for all technical, financial, and legal aspects of Tokenization. Business: Broker Dealers | Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 2018 |Jurisdiction: Germany

Blockimmo
A platform that enables the buying and selling of secure real estate powered by blockchain technology. Business: Crowdfunding | Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 12/27/2018 |Jurisdiction: Switzerland

BlockRules
A Californian based blockchain company specializing in the creation, issuance, and management of digital securities. Business: Security Token Issuers |Jurisdiction: USA

BlockState.
Blockstate is a digital securities tokenization and issuance platform operating out of Zug 'Crypto Valley', Switzerland. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 11/14/2018 |Jurisdiction: Switzerland

Capexmove
A United Kingdom based company which specializes in the digitization of debt, through the use of blockchain. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 05/18/2018 |Jurisdiction: UK

Daura
Tokenization platform targeting Swiss small and medium enterprises. Business: Security Token Issuers |Jurisdiction: Switzerland

Desico
A security token platform offering both issuance and trading services, which target the European market. Business: Security Token Issuers |Jurisdiction: Lithuania

Digishares
A tokenization company looking usher in the future of finance through the use of blockchain technologies. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 01/17/2019 |Jurisdiction: Denmark

Fintelum.
Fintelum is an Estonian based security token issuance platform. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 03/09/2018 |Jurisdiction: Estonia

GlobacapFC
A regulated, London based, 'automated capital markets platform ‘Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 03/11/2017 |Jurisdiction: UK

HighCastle
Offers the a UK based investment marketplace and blockchain based share registrar. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 03/20/2018 |Jurisdiction: UK

Konkrete
They use blockchain technology to provide a comprehensive platform for the tokenization cycle of digital securities. Business: Security Token Issuers |Jurisdiction: Australia

LeadBest
A tokenization platform facilitating cross-border investing, through the use of blockchain technologies. Business: Security Token Issuers |Jurisdiction: Taiwan

Ledgity.
Ledgity looks to create a global market for issuing/investing in security tokens through their use of blockchain technology. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 06/07/2018 |Jurisdiction: Switzerland

Meridio
They use blockchain to open up lucrative real-estate investment opportunities to global participants. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 10/01/2017 |Jurisdiction: USA

Neufund
A European blockchain company offering services including an STO platform tailored toward digital securities. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 01/09/2016 |Jurisdiction: Germany

PaperStreet
Paperstreet caters to SMEs by providing a 'white label' service, facilitating access to capital through STOs. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 01/03/2018 |Jurisdiction: USA

Polymath
They simplify the process for launching security tokens by offering in-house protocols. This includes the Ethereum based ST-20 protocol. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 2017 |Jurisdiction: Barbados

Preflogic
A self-described 'STO Wizard', PrefLogic makes use of SERC tokens to allow the tokenization of real world assets on their platform. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 2018 |Jurisdiction: USA

RealBlocks
Uses the Ethereum blockchain to issue tokenized securities backed exclusively by real-estate, bringing new levels of liquidity to this asset class. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 01/09/2017 |Jurisdiction: USA

Securitize
Through the use of blockchain, Securitize is able to function a comprehensive platform for the issuance and management of digital securities. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 2017 |Jurisdiction: USA

Securrency
They use the blockchain to deploy custom protocols, allowing for lifecycle management of digital securities. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 11/09/2015 |Jurisdiction: USA

Smartlands
An investment platform, which uses blockchain to issue security tokens for global markets. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 08/30/2018 |Jurisdiction: UK

Stobox
Stobox offers compliant fundraising solution for small and medium-sized enterprises, investment funds and real estate developers from an award-winning Maltese company. Business: Legal | Marketing | Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 01/04/2019 |Jurisdiction: Malta

Swarm
A Californian based decentralized capital marketplace. Swarm utilizes blockchain to open new opportunities to both companies and investors .Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 2017 |Jurisdiction: USA

Symbiont
A decentralized platform built with the goal of issuing smart securities, in an institutional setting. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 2013 |Jurisdiction: USA

Token IQ
Offers a variety of solutions, including blockchain, to assist companies along their growth path. This includes consultation on sale events such as STOs. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 2017 |Jurisdiction: USA

Tokeny
Offers a comprehensive platform built around security tokens, with the goal of bringing 'liquidity to the best investment opportunities’. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 2017 |Jurisdiction: Luxembourg

UnitedCrowd
A German company, tackling capital markets, through the use of blockchain and tokenization. Business: Security Token Issuers |Incorporation Date: 08/12/2016 |Jurisdiction: Hong Kong

source

This is the future, Steem is there now.

@shortsegments

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