Taoiseach Simon Harris pictured in April at the quarterly update on progress under Housing for All. Regular savings by individuals into real-estate tokens would reduce the enormity of commitment when it came time to buy a home, for example. Photograph: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.iecontinues to evolve and grow – fascinate and sometimes intimidate. A watershed moment happened in January when the financial regulator in the US approved the first bitcoin ETF or “Exchange Traded Fund”.
Today, financial assets require countless administrators to transact successfully. Conversely, every day $30 billion worth of Bitcoin changes hands between buyers and sellers without the need for any human intervention. The software that runs the blockchain infrastructure ensures that a successful exchange is achieved automatically without any manual administration. Furthermore, this can be achieved without any downtime – the software runs 24/7.
There are, however, barriers to tokenisation of real estate. The governance of property title does not lend itself well to multiple-party ownership – how are decisions about upgrades taken between so many token holders? Can you tokenise an asset that is already leveraged with multiple charges – who does the creditor make accountable for repayment? Not insurmountable challenges but also not issues that blockchain technology necessarily can solve.