By the end of this month, El Segundo-based startup Aperture Real Estate Ventures plans to launch a real estate-backed cryptocurrency. The idea behind the project is to give investors the opportunity to own a portfolio of real estate assets via the blockchain.
How this will happen is whenever an investor buys the new coin, Property Coin, he or she is essentially investing into a fund backed by the company’s fix-and-flip portfolio.
Money raised in the initial coin offering will be invested in properties around the country selected by Aperture’s staff and its own algorithm, according to a report in Inman and The Real Deal online news. The new coin will be built on Ethereum.
Here comes the inherent clash between Ethereum and Bitcoin in terms of applications in the real estate market. Ethereum is being integrated in multiple channels in various sectors. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is constantly fighting with regulators around the world, and transactions seem to be on halt after the much-devated value of the “people’s currency”.
When it comes to the real estate market, investor Michael Komaransky completed the most expensive Bitcoin-to-Bitcoin real estate sale in late January, when he sold a 9,400-square-foot Miami mansion for 455 Bitcoin. That factored to roughly $6 million at the time, according to The Real Deal magazine.
Property Coin is being designed for one major purpose, and that is to democratize “country club” style fix-and-flip home investment deals that are typically only available to wealthy and well-connected individuals.
It also sees the cryptocurrency as transparent, because investors can see what backs its value and aren’t subject “to the wild fluctuations in the belief of the value of that asset,” Jewett said. That’s a common criticism of Bitcoin — its value is largely speculative.
Initially, the Property Coin will be sold for $50 per coin, beginning on 26th February, 2018. Investors must buy a minimum of $1,000 worth of coins, in order to participate in the company’s ICO. The trick here is that this amount relates only to US investors. International ones can get in for as little as $100.