One of the most interesting use cases for NFTs is tokenizing real life assets, like real estate. There are quite a few attempts at this, and I recently learned about a new one, called Propy (I assume it comes from "proprietary", or owner). They already sold an apartment using their smart contracts recording method, but it was in Ucraine. Now they are auctioning a couple of US properties, in Florida, in less than two weeks from now.
What caught my attention when I read the news was this specific wording:
If successful, the buyers will get a Florida-based investment property, owning a US-based entity that owns the property, the ownership rights of which are associated with an NFT. It is not fractional ownership, and becomes a DeFi asset that can be borrowed against.
"Owning a US-based property", not the asset itself. Interesting.
I guess that's the best they could come up with, in terms of legal friction. It may not be yet legal to own a piece of real estate as NFT, but it may be legal to own a company as NFT, and that company owns the actual property.
Which makes me think that, in the short to medium term, this approach will become just as difficult as the current ones. These are just layers on top of other layers. It doesn't look like simplification to me.
What needs to be changed seems to be the legal framework itself, and, in the case of countries, this is time consuming.
That's why I'm not very optimistic about startups like Propy, but I am optimistic about the shift from countries to DAOs. It may take a decade or two, but the end result will be profoundly changing.
Photo by Tierra Mallorca on Unsplash