Context

The market cap of global annual real estate sales is 1.68 trillion[1]. These sales rely on a legal system that has been slow to embrace new technologies. While travel agents, record stores and retailers have moved online in the last 20 years, real estate is still bought and sold in much the same way as it was before the invention of the internet.

With the evolution of trustless blockchain technologies to bring counterparties together in a trustless fashion without intermediaries, disruption is now possible. With disruption, real estate can become a more liquid asset, one that can be exchanged with less friction in a more efficient marketplace.

The key to this disruption is the emergence of tokenized real estate, where counterparties can trade real estate assets with non fungible tokens (NFTs) on liquid markets as they do with equities today.

This change has barely begun. The first real estate sale using NFTs occurred in mid 2021. These sales were typically backed by a legal team provided by one of the counterparties whose job it was to ensure property transfers and title deed registrations were handled in line with local laws following the transfer of the NFT.