And as we move, thank God that the universe is providing us the answer piece by piece, one at a time, every right things happen at the right moment.

Reading Notes:

Yes, there are no ready-to-go legal models built for corporates to attract or borrow funds from DeFi protocols on the market today.

But it’s possible to build one with minimal effort, as the benefits of DeFi borrowing easily cover the efforts of building such a system.

DeFi might be able to provide borrowing on perfect terms for corporate institutions, which is something that might make them consider entering the market.

Meanwhile, corporate institutions will be willing to provide several types of stable assets to be used as collateral for their loans.

However, there is a real need for real-world assets to be used as collateral in DeFi protocols to prevent more market falls in the future, fixing the over-collateralization issue along the way.

Opinion from the author:

Until new regimes for the offering of tokenized instruments are built (and there are no bright signs in this direction), I believe real-world assets tokenization in a form of an STO will still be limited to closed offerings with no attention from the global market.

Artem Tolkachev is the founder and CEO of Tokenomica. For over six years, Artem has been a key blockchain and tokenization opinion leader in the CIS region. Since 2011, he has been an intellectual property and information technology lawyer and entrepreneur. In 2016, Artem founded and headed Deloitte CIS Blockchain Lab. As part of that initiative, he led a range of innovative projects involving the implementation of enterprise blockchain solutions, tokenization of real-world assets, tax and legal structuring of security token offerings, development of cryptocurrency, and blockchain legislation.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/why-defi-plus-asset-tokenization-will-take-crypto-to-new-heights

Notes: Less regulatory uncertainty, a developed market infrastructure, and less risk surrounding security will bring the crypto market cap to $2T and above.

The post DeFi and Asset Tokenization appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

What’s the biggest challenge of all facing the real estate industry now?

Liquidity.

What can be done in a credit crunch situation?

Alternative funding, or a new source of money, given the opportunities brought by the blockchain technology.

With new technologies come new opportunities.

While blockchain promises transparency, traceability, and immutability, we can look at it from either the technology part or economic side of it, or both.

This is the dawn of a new era. Technology is bringing down borders of the legacy system. Blockchain will disrupt the bankings’ financing business just like how the web disrupted the telcos’ communication business.

The billion dollar question is:

How Can The Real Estate Industry Embrace Blockchain Technology And The Crypto Economy?

Tokenization is one of the ways.

But it has to be done step by step, one at a time. This is because the real estate industry is a highly regulated market, just after banking and finance.

The ABCD+X Business Track

Awareness

Industry-specific stakeholders must be well aware of what is going to happen from a broader view. Initially, test water approaches can be carried out, to know the acceptance level and the readiness at the new frontier.

Business Model

Once the situation or condition is getting clearer, high level perspective of how things should work must be figured out. This concerns mainly the people and the process.

Conceptional Design

Drill down to resource identification, system architecture, detailed flow charts etc. related to facilitation of system development. Documents such as Blueprint, Functional Design Specification, Project Management Plan, Data Modelling Design etc. should be ready.

Development And Deployment

Hands on and project implementation. Beta to stable version and upgrading lifecycle.

Case Study: Property Developers’ Roadmap To DLT Implementation

Image below shows the proposed approach to a real estate developer looking at possibilities of integrating crypto payment and blockchain technology in their residential and commercial development projects.

Note that it doesn’t have to be in exact sequence. These are the components in one possible pathway to tokenization.

Start something somewhere, somehow.

The courage and ability to take actions while others are still hesitating is what separates market leaders from the rest. It doesn’t have to be a drastic move.

For instance, creating awareness and getting market feedback or responses through series of talk or seminar or workshop will increase the possibilities of pulling in the right crowd. In this case, the cryptocurrency players or holders, who may have in their hand a handsome amount of tradeable cryptocurrency.

Moving forward, start to familiarize the corporate itself by accepting cryptocurrency as a method of payment. Exchange products or services with crypto.

This is not theoretical anymore. Malaysian company such as KLSE listed property counter CHHB is pioneering the crypto adoption. On the global shores, Nasdaq listed, the world’s largest business intelligence software company Microstrategy adopted Bitcoin as a primary treasury reserve asset in the multi-million dollar scale.

From the initial stage of familiarizing with crypto economy, the real estate developer can then further explore fractional ownership options, Securities Token Offering (STO) for project funding, functional token for community management and other great opportunities to be unleashed.

People, process, technology. People come first. Technology is just the enabler.

The post Real Estate Tokenization: Embracing The Blockchain Technology And Crypto Economy appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

1) Could California become its own crypto-country?

2) Bermuda hopes to jumpstart their economy with new ‘stimulus token’

3) Shanghai’s Jing’an District issues blockchain-based discount coupons

4) Swiss crypto bank Sygnum scores approval for digital asset trading

Reading Notes

Could California become its own crypto-country?

The idea of a future crypto-based economy, which could finance a level of free healthcare, free education, and a form of basic income (UBI) at a scale that has never before been seen.

People investing in land and property through crypto transactions could help boost the proposed implementation of Universal Basic Income.

California’s Senate Banking and Financial Institutions Committee recently passed a bill seeking to define digital assets and measure their impact on state and consumer protections.

A Brexit-inspired plan wants to make California its own nation, separate from the USA. The people behind the plan are now looking to establish cryptocurrencies as the financial backbone of the proposed nation.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/could-california-become-its-own-crypto-country

Bermuda hopes to jumpstart their economy with new ‘stimulus token’

“What we are proposing is bypassing all the middle-men, bypassing the banks, and airdrop what is basically an IOU from the government to the people. You will go to a website and register your ID, and the Government will airdrop to you a certain amount of money. It will be immediate and you will have it on your phone wallet.”

As part of the program, the government plans to enable the purchase of food and other products from retailers to strengthen its now-necessary array of contactless payment solutions.

The Bermuda government will also distribute payments to those who qualify for coronavirus-related financial aid using the tokens.

All the transactions will be handled through a digital wallet managed from a mobile app. Assets in this app will be spendable at vendors through QR codes and point-of-sale devices.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bermuda-hopes-to-jumpstart-their-economy-with-new-stimulus-token

Shanghai’s Jing’an District issues blockchain-based discount coupons

The Jing’an District of Shanghai has started offering blockchain-based discount coupons.

The tourism bureau has integrated blockchain to their WeChat mini-program to adjust the number of coupons in circulation and the validity period of each of these by analyzing how people are using them. The mini-program will send out new coupons daily.

The value of each blockchain-based coupon will vary between 5 yuan ($0.73) to 60 yuan ($8.80).

Employees, students and other residents of the district will be able to obtain the coupons using the WeChat mini-program. They can then redeem them at the movies, theater performances and for online courses.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/shanghais-jingan-district-issues-blockchain-based-discount-coupons

Swiss crypto bank Sygnum scores approval for digital asset trading

Sygnum, a major cryptocurrency bank in Switzerland, is preparing to finally introduce digital asset trading after receiving regulatory approval.

The new approval enables Sygnum to “cover the complete life-cycle of a security,” starting from services such as primary issuance, settlement and custody to secondary trading.

USP: Users now have access to instant settlement via the Sygnum-issued stablecoin Digital Swiss franc (DCHF).

Licensing: The bank has been aggressively expanding its services; after obtaining a Swiss banking license in August 2019, Sygnum was also licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore the following month.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/swiss-crypto-bank-sygnum-scores-approval-for-digital-asset-trading

The post ROTD : Nation-state Cryptonization appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

1) Telos will tokenize $35 million of Croatian seafront real estate

2) Aspen launches on tZERO amid record security token volume

Reading Notes

Telos will tokenize $35 million of Croatian seafront real estate

“We are at the dawn of tokenization revolutionizing the real estate industry.”

Telos has announced that it would be working with Dapp development platform Katalyo to tokenize $35M worth of Croatian properties.

Telos — one of the most active blockchains in the world in terms of transactions — said Katalyo would be issuing two tokens for each participating seaside property. One token would represent ownership of the real estate, and the second would be a fiat-based stablecoin generated from rental revenue.

Telos is a smart contract platform that supports the creation of decentralized applications and decentralized autonomous organizations running on EOSIO, the software underlying the EOS blockchain. It is the second most active blockchain according to Blocktivity, with more than four million users over the last 24 hours.

Aspen launches on tZERO amid record security token volume

An important step toward unlocking liquidity to quality real estate projects, which has the potential to open the door to a $6 trillion commercial real estate market.

Digitizing and trading private securities like Aspen will be the future model that will enable broader investor access, provide liquidity optionality, and reduce cost of capital.

Aspen (ASPD), the security token representing fractional ownership in the St. Regis Aspen Resort — a five-star 179-room hotel in Colorado, has commenced trading on the tZERO alternative trading system.

Elevated Returns plans to tokenize a further $1 billion worth of real estate projects using Tezos’ FA1.2 smart contract standard in the future.

July was also a particularly strong month for real estate tokens, with the nine property tokens traded on RealT’s secondary markets posting gains of between 7% and 35%.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/aspen-launches-on-tzero-amid-record-security-token-volume

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Pros of NFT

• They could unlock new revenue streams in gaming, sports, the arts, and technology.
• NFTs could introduce millions of people to cryptocurrencies for the very first time.
• They can transform our attitudes toward ownership — and make it possible to own a real-world asset that’s thousands of miles away.

Cons of NFT

• Building decentralized apps for non‑fungible tokens can be tricky and time consuming.
• Much more simplification is needed so NFTs are easy to use for people who know nothing about blockchain.
• NFT games can have a ”hot potato” effect. Players buy an asset in the hope of selling it on for a profit, but if the market collapses, they can make a nasty loss.

NFT Stats

• All these stats making promises of astronomical growth don’t tell the full story, though. The NFT space does have its challenges.
• According to Nonfungible.com’s annual report, most projects have a poor retention rate — and in 2019, the vast majority were used for three months or less. As of February 2020, just 3.5% of these platforms were used for more than 10 months.
• The liquidity of NFTs is also a crucial measure of how healthy a marketplace is, but in 2019, just 12% of newly created assets actually circulated between users.

Big NFT News in 2020 (so far)

• Back in March 2020, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss revamped Nifty, a centralized exchange that allows people to sell their tokens and withdraw their profits in fiat.
• Companies are using NFTs to help consumers establish ownership and control over their DNA data, and others are planning to launch peer-to-peer marketplaces for NFT mortgages and rentals.
• NFTs are even being created for journalistic content in a bid to tackle fake news.

What’s Next?

• A straightforward user interface will be crucial for unlocking mainstream adoption.
• As endless experimentation takes place, we’ll likely see several NFT projects crash and burn. Some will struggle to maintain the excitement and momentum they have immediately after launching.
• As such, if you’re tempted to snap up a pricy token worth a few hundred bucks, make sure you’re not left holding a hot potato.

Full artcile: https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/nonfungible-tokens/

The post ROTD: Non-Fungible Token (NFT) appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

1. SuperRare.co – A Blockchain Platform for Artworks Trading

2. Artist Whose NFT Broke Auction Records ‘Dismissed’ NFTs Initially

3. Crypto Artists and Investors Trusts NFTs to Transform the Art Industry

Related Notes

SuperRare.co – A Blockchain Platform for Artworks Trading

Aug 05, 2020 – Martin Young, CoinTelegraph

Digital Art Trading Platform ‘SuperRare’ Sees Volume Increase 365%

• The digital art scene is becoming a hotbed of activity for non-fungible tokens*.
• Digital art marketplace ‘SuperRare’ has surpassed $1.6 million in cumulative trade volume as buyers become more comfortable with the concept of art sold as non-fungible tokens.
• The marketplace started the year with $344,000 in platform sales volume, but has seen that figure almost quadruple in seven months.
• Artists are able to digitally sign their work on the platform by creating a tokenized certificate before entering it into an online auction. Collectors can then purchase and resell works in secondary markets.
• The marketplace itself recently claimed that over 8,000 works had been sold on the platform, earning artists over $1.3 million and collectors over $430,000.

* A non-fungible token (NFT) is a specific type of digital asset where each token has a unique identifier.

Artist Whose NFT Broke Auction Records ‘Dismissed’ NFTs Initially

Aug 06, 2020 – Samuel Haig, CoinTelegraph

Trevor Jones, the artist who composed Picasso’s Bull — an NFT that sold for a record $55,555 on NIfty — originally thought that NFTs were destined to fail.

The art colleges and artists, commercial galleries and auction houses that don’t adapt to the new ways of creating, selling, investing in and displaying art will eventually become obsolete.
I see NFTs as a huge part of my future and the future of art and the art market in general. As the space grows and more sales like Picasso’s Bull occur the traditional art market will eventually catch on to the digital art market revolution.

Crypto Artists and Investors Trusts NFTs to Transform the Art Industry

Nifty Gateway, a leading marketplace for nonfungible tokens with the backing of the Winklevoss brothers, recorded its largest-valued auction to-date on July 23 when the digital artwork and NFT “Picasso’s Bull” sold for $55,555.55.

The milestone comes as benefits of

• fractionalized ownership,
• decentralized provenance verification, and
• the global liquidity pool enabled by blockchain technology

are enticing both art creators and investors to explore NFTs.

“Fractionalizing (offering “shares” in an artwork) is now possible, and I’ll soon be offering fractional ownership of my physical paintings through NFTs.” ~ Trevor Jones

Animated Digital Artwork video here:

The post Tokenizing Social Arts appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

1. Real Estate Blockchain Firm Ubitquity to Build Tokenized Title Platform

2. Mobile DeFi and the Shift Toward Self-Sovereignty

3. Russia Is Set to Create a New Regime for Tokenized Securities

4. Title Token for Blockchain Estate Registry, Part 3

Reading Notes

Real Estate Blockchain Firm Ubitquity to Build Tokenized Title Platform

• Having tokens represent a property, along with records of conveyance stored on a blockchain, creates “huge efficiencies for the abstract process.”
• With the technology closing agents can better avoid fraud since there is only a single source of truth and reconciliation is no longer needed.

Mobile DeFi and the Shift Toward Self-Sovereignty

• Many speculate that mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency is dependent solely on improving ease of access and user experience. In reality, there’s an even bigger obstacle: a mentality shift.
• Self-sovereignty and personal autonomy are the endgame of this technology, and with that goal comes a significant increase in personal responsibility for one’s funds.
• The legacy system takes away your autonomy and replaces it with convenience, offering useful tools related to fraud protection and password management. By comparison, cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance and other forms of distributed technology fall on the other end of that spectrum, providing the ability to have true ownership of one’s worth.
• The liberating elements of crypto and financial freedom are promising but intimidating since security is passed from the hands of a third party directly into the hands of the consumer.
• Crypto, DeFi and decentralized applications promise to fulfill the original vision of our connected future, in which users could retain absolute ownership of their funds as they transacted in a global market.
• The key here is offering familiar experiences in line with best practices in crypto security so that the difficult but absolutely necessary shift in mentality is made more palatable.
• The decision to be personally responsible for one’s own wealth should be a burden of diligence, not of exhausting learning experiences.

Russia Is Set to Create a New Regime for Tokenized Securities

• According to the new (Russian) law, digital financial assets, or DFAs, represent digital rights, including monetary claims, the possibility of exercising rights under issuable securities, the right to participate in the capital of a nonpublic joint-stock company, and the right to demand the transfer of issuable securities.
• In a broad sense, this means that DFAs are tokenized securities.
• Basically, the new Russian law regulates the issuance, turnover and offering of tokenized assets.
• DFAs can be only issued on licensed issuance platforms that are operating in full compliance with incredibly strict regulations.
• It’s ironic that with all this time spent to create crypto regulation, there is no crypto regulation. However, Russian legislators managed to create a clear approach to the regulation of tokenized securities.

Title Token for Blockchain Estate Registry, Part 3

• Discussing cross-blockchain protocol that enables the use of ledgers in an interoperable bundle.
• The protocol works as an aggregator of tokens across blockchains.
• The resulting representation of the collected tokens is a logical superstructure across many blockchains — the public registry.
• A government agency, for example, doesn’t exclusively own one public property database, but it literally lives on every user’s machine in the cross-blockchain database.
• A component of governance to address legal issues and enforce lawful decisions – in Title Token for Blockchain Estate Registry, Part 2
• Three fundamental principles for decentralization: Technological pluralism. Technological neutrality. Blockchain agnostic.
• There must be verified digital identities, but without exposing personal data on-chain at the same time. And the answer to that is the combination of old and new technologies.
• Blockchain technology is the perfect solution to develop a new generation of public key infrastructure (PKIs). Think about public certificates as tokens. Similar to creating tokens (certificates) of property, we can also create tokens to certify our identity. If you lose your private key, you will need to contact your certificate authority and ask to update its token of your identitiy (certificate) as invalid.
• To reduce the risks of leaks of personal data from centralized servers, we should use self-sovereign identities.
• Credible public blockchains provide immutable ledgers, which, contrary to traditionally state-owned property registries, enable users to perform peer-to-peer transactions.
• However, blockchains do not require any public agency to maintain the infrastructure, as public ledgers are self-governed.

Title tokens are records that represent legal rights. They are validated on-chain by those whom we trust and delegate this right.

• Contrary to the centralized system, ledgers require everything to be recorded on-chain publicly to take effect, and they do not alter recorded transactions. So, on-chain governance is transparent and accountable.
• This concept can be piloted step-by-step and run parallel to the existing system of public registries.
• The shift will happen when the government that wants to benefit from innovations recognizes the right of citizens to choose between a traditional registry and a blockchain, and it is a fundamental right for the decentralization of governance.

The post ROTD: Tokenized Title Platform, Self-Sovereignty, Tokenized Securities, Title Token for Blockchain Estate Registry appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

1) Blockchain-Based Smart City Project Limestone Plans for Token Listing

2) Title Token for Blockchain Estate Registry, Part 1

3) Self-Service Platform Issues Security Tokens Backed by Real-World Assets

4) Tokenization Holds the Key to Sustainable Platform Business Model Growth

Reading Notes

Blockchain-Based Smart City Project Limestone Plans for Token Listing

A Singapore blockchain-based smart city project in the Cambodian capital wants to list its native token on a crypto exchange.

Title Token for Blockchain Estate Registry, Part 1

A blockchain is an append-only database of transactions, and retroactivity or access of third parties is impossible.

Only the owner of the private key to the address where tokens are recorded can authorize further transactions. It causes a long list of legal considerations, but to make it clear, let us name the major ones.

There is no way how a user: can inherit a token; can enforce a lawful court decision, for instance, to resolve a dispute; or can restore access if the private key is lost.

If the token is the primary source of knowledge about your legal right for anything, you lose this right by losing access to this record, as you cannot dispose of it — i.e., perform any transaction. You cannot simply create another token to represent the same right. Any buyer will have legitimate doubts that someone else suddenly finds the private key to the lost token. Tokens representing the same right in the system will create a sort of double-spending problem. This model runs the risk of uncertainty in who owns what, and it is unlikely that massive tokenization will happen under these circumstances.

“Permissioned blockchain” is a rhetorical oxymoron.

Self-Service Platform Issues Security Tokens Backed by Real-World Assets

Tokenizer is putting the tools to turn real-world assets into security tokens within the hands of the everyman.

Tokenization Holds the Key to Sustainable Platform Business Model Growth

In a global economy becoming more and more digitized, blockchain-based tokenization could become a powerful and even perfect tool.

Finance and Inclusion

Crisis as a Catalyst for Change: Southeast Asia Is Digitizing Finances

Southeast Asia’s relations with open finance and emerging technologies have become more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/crisis-as-a-catalyst-for-change-southeast-asia-is-digitizing-finances

Income Inequality: Can Bitcoin or Other Cryptocurrencies Fix This?

Despite the benefits of crypto being in the hands of the few, the current crisis may be a harbinger of change.

With the influx of new money fueling demand in the equity markets, what we are witnessing is the inflation of financial assets, and a floating of the haves, combined with deflation of economic assets, and a needed rescue of the have-nots.

Instead of tilting at central bank windmills, crypto would do well to focus on what it does well — as a speculative store of value.

With all the liquidity entering the markets and the finite number of Bitcoin, market participants have been increasingly bullish on the crypto — it’s just market number logic.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/income-inequality-can-bitcoin-or-other-cryptocurrencies-fix-this

The post ROTD : Tokenizing Real Estates & Financial Inclusion appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

Tokenization is the process by which the real asset value of the property is represented digitally on the blockchain in token form.

What problem is Tokenization trying to solve?
Fractional ownership and Liquidity, some over priced and over supply issues perhaps.

How?

Create and mobilize new form of capitals.

Challenges?

Trust. Circulation. Legal.

Bringing Down Borders

If I were to develop a city, and I issue a token which has these 4 characteristic or functions:

1) Security
Token holders entitled to earn certain income or profit sharing for x number of tokens hold over y amount of time.

2) Privileges
For upcoming or in-house projects, token holders entitled to special price or privileges.

3) Utility
Token holders can use their token to pay for services or products under internal environment, such as inter-city spendings.

4) Currency
This token is acceptable by other cities or entity other than the issuer.

Now, tell me what breed of “money” shall we identify this token?

The key is programmable money.

It is good that we have the direction of coming up with technical and policy framework for programmable money first.

Implementation wise, it is do-able technically due to its programmable nature.

Take the analogy of a simplified illustration of daily life of a working male adult:

Early morning as he steps into the office, he will play the role as an employee of the company, where his action will be bound by company rules and (common) work culture.

After office hour, as he transits back from company to home, he would be bound by social etiquette and city rules along the way.

At home, he could be playing the role of a husband, and a father to his children, where family values play the major factor defining the activities he could be carrying.

Condition of a situation may define the role and characteristic of an entity, thus resulting in the activities and produce the consequences.

Quantum elements exist in the thought process.

Presentation slides used:

Follow up news:

It is interesting to note that one of Malaysia’s initiative is featured in one of Coin Telegraphs report on Municipal Crypto.

A Mechanism To Fund Certain Projects

States, provinces and municipalities could use cryptocurrencies to fund projects and programs. Municipal cryptocurrencies — that is, cryptocurrencies launched by cities — could offer citizens a new way to invest in a certain location and even buy goods while helping governments to fund projects.

The minimum bond investment is $1,000, although they are usually sold in batches of $5,000. People who want to invest less simply cannot do it. Cryptocurrencies and tokens could be used for assets under $5 million and enable investments under $5,000.

The main mechanism for municipal cryptocurrency is the securitization of assets.

* Securitization is the process of establishing a financial instrument that merged from various financial assets into one group.

The post Tokenizing Real Estates appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

It was a Mandarin speaking event and the topic of sharing was “Tokenizing Real Estates” and “The Sharing Economy”.

Tokenizing Real Estates (Mandarin)

p/s: This was the second Chinese session after our first Chinese sharing session at SITEC last year.

The investment forum was held at 9th March 2019 and attended by some 500+ investors from around the country. It was a Mandarin speaking session for Chinese community.

Organized by Hua Zong (Federation of Chinese Associations Malaysia), this is an annual investment forum since 2002. This is the 17th year since its inception, which makes the event a trustworthy brand when it comes to investment related economic forum.

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