Vertalo, a digital asset platform facilitating security tokens, has partnered with Advantage Blockchain in a collaboration to tokenize real estate offerings. Advantage Blockchain seeks to provide services to real estate professionals, publicly-traded and private companies, and individuals who want to use blockchain technology
According to a blog post, Advantage will leverage Vertalo’s platforms including: “custodians, venues for primary issuance and secondary liquidity, KYC/AML, and accreditation services, to implement value-driving blockchain technologies that improve efficiency in the operations of Commercial Real Estate and increase liquidity possibilities for owners, real estate fund managers, and private REIT shareholders.”
Vertalo adds that it intends to leverage the Tezos blockchain for the securities while partnering with Prime Trust on custody and at some point in the future plans to trade on tZero.
Dave Hendricks, CEO and co-founder of Vertalo, said his team has been working with Advantage Blockchain since the summer of 2019:
“As the relationship deepened between our two firms we saw the same market of Private REITs and Commercial Real Estate come into focus. Through conversations with Advantage and its clients it became apparent that we should extend Vertalo’s capabilities directly to Advantage Blockchain. By Licensing Vertalo’s technology, Advantage is able to take the Vertalo Real Estate Tokenization Platform directly to their clients faster, and at lower cost, while connecting them to Vertalo’s trading and custody partners. By working with Vertalo, Licensees like Advantage Blockchain access a best-in-class consortium of partners that simplify digital transformation for their clients. Through this consortium, commercial real estate owners and their investors will also be able to custody their proceeds and clear funds and perform 1031 transactions with Vertalo custody partners like Prime Trust. In addition, Vertalo is looking forward to having these securities qualify for trading on the tZERO ATS. Liquidity is a critical function that does not currently exist for buyers and sellers of these valuable real estate assets.”
Gary Brandeis, President of Real Estate Capital Management and a partner to Advantage Blockchain, said that real estate is the perfect industry to take advantage of these innovations.
Marc Paquin, co-founder of Advantage Blockchain, said they believe that Vertalo is positioned “not only as a frontrunner, but truly at the core of the new digital securities and digital real estate ecosystem. Vertalo’s Tokenization technology is providing a promising path to liquidity for all types of private real estate.”
Vertalo did not provide a time frame for the issuance of and trading of any digital securities backed by real estate.
As for Tezos, a growing number of issuers have migrated to the blockchain as being digital securities friendly.
Real estate is widely believed to benefit from the intrinsic abilities of smart contracts and distributed ledger technology to remove friction in assets that can become complex in primary issuance and future management.