Category: fintech

Financial technology

Hedera & RedSwan.io Trailblaze To Facilitate High Liquidity Real Estate Transactions

Zena TP Williams

High-Liquidity Real Estate

 

This month, I had the honor and pleasure of sitting down with the RedSwan.io team including Founder, Ed Nwokedi, in Houston, TX. The retreat was held in Midtown at the Ion, right in the heart of Houston’s innovation district. One of the most compelling aspects of this experience was gaining deeper insights into the mechanics and rationale behind some of their pivotal partnerships. How is this global real estate team leveling the playing field for high-liquidity real estate investments through blockchain without the massive transaction fees that typically burden buyers and sellers?

 

Hedera with the tag line: Hello Future, led by Shayne Higdon, emerged as a standout. Hedera, a Web3 application, facilitates transactions for real-world asset tokenization (securitization) . Being a decentralized platform with a distributed ledger, Hedera can process and finalize transactions in around 3.4 seconds—at a fraction of the cost compared to its peers. This efficiency removes the delays traditionally associated with transaction finalization, enabling more transactions to occur faster and with greater ease. One of the most significant takeaways was the team’s initial hesitation to adopt open-source code to avoid mass forking which helps reduce the noise. However, with safeguards in place to minimize forking, their open-source, permissionless network has seen rapid adoption. This openness lowers the barrier to entry for opportunities such as real estate investment transactions for a fraction of the cost and at will speeds.

 

Some of Hedera’s strongest partnerships include working with Deloitte to verify ESG and environmental impact claims, which can help curb greenwashing and enhance meaningful carbon reduction efforts. Hedera is also utilized in financial services applications, including not just RedSwan, but consulting for IBM.


So, how does Hedera benefit? The answer lies in fixed fees. By securing the platform with governance similar to Visa’s but without making it inaccessible, Hedera has focused on refining processes that others have yet to develop. With just under 200,000 transactions every 24 hours, Hedera is poised to thrive with a superior and cleaner product.

 

It was thrilling to hear how RedSwan and Hedera’s founder are making waves in real estate transactions. RedSwan has over $9B in assets trading. Soon to be included is a recent international fund set to go live in a few months. The high-liquidity aspect allows investors to hold their portion of each real estate asset for just one (1) year, per SEC regulations – yes RedSwan is SEC-regulated – for private companies. After that, investors can release their holdings into a secondary market on the RedSwan platform and explore a myriad of new high-liquidity real estate investment opportunities. While this opportunity is currently available only to institutional and accredited investors, these real estate assets have been thoroughly vetted by professionals, providing the type of transparency that investors seek. At this time, the platform is focused on Core and Core Plus assets but also welcomes new opportunities from property owners looking to refinance without renegotiating with institutional backers. 

 

Last but not least, Ed, finalized the event with the Tech & Tequila event hosted by Blue People in the heart of downtown about what benefits real estate tokenization brings potential investors. Log onto the RedSwan.io site and review the portfolio with ease. If you want real insight into investments even from a family office perspective this is worth the time. 

Revolutionizing the way we buy, trade, and sell commercial real estate (CRE)

Zena TP Williams

 

The Game Changer

Are you all about the early retirement paradigm? I thought so. So, let’s talk about the way and why folks are revolutionizing the way you buy, trade, and sell Commercial Real Estate (CRE). CRE is now being tokenized on blockchain technology for fractional ownership. This new system securitizes real estate. The result is a lower barrier to entry and higher liquidity, and the foundations of those benefits are on blockchain today. Therefore, blockchain is a game changer. Keep in mind this is currently NOT a retail offering but today, accredited and institutional investors can most certainly capitalize on this opportunity. See more through the second installment of how RedSwan.io is further revolutionizing how we buy, sell, and trade, commercial real estate today. 

On behalf of asset type, real estate investments are hedges against inflation as they are vehicles through which you can store value (wealth) while owning a tangible asset. When debt is what our economy has run on, there must be a way to beat inflation by staying ahead of leverage (debt). Staying ahead increases your purchasing power. Having and keeping capital is the name of the game. Like everyone who signs up for debt, it is in hopes of higher returns than what you owe and the interest you owe on your debt combined. As a whole, as long as we stay ahead of our leverage through productivity (putting your cash assets to work) that leads to economic growth, healthy commerce, and more sound investments. Economies will prosper, and opportunity will flourish.

You are probably asking yourself what actions you can take to set yourself up for success:

I am not yet financial advisor, but the logic goes that the right investments can set you up for a healthy retirement and hopefully through various vehicles income as well. The Social Security system isn’t a given in the next 30 years. Real estate is, and it is, one of the fastest ways to grow your wealth. Lastly, and as mentioned above, it can help you hedge against inflation through its ability to store value. Later in this post, I state that our US currency isn’t currently backed by tangible real-life assets. Real estate is a tangible real-life asset. Also, according to the experts, space (real estate) is here to stay, although its use will keep evolving based on what is most productive. Throughout history, there has been a higher barrier to entry to growing your wealth through commercial real estate ownership. What if you could now get in the game and afford to purchase and trade fractional ownership of property through a transaction from the owner straight to you powered by self executing contracts (once all terms of trade are met)? Let’s add in the generation of passive income (dividends) should you choose to hold. Might that be a needle mover in your financial success? I think so. Now, you can purchase and trade real estate, more easily follow transactions, and sans the middle man with intensive transactional costs and all those hidden fees.

A brief history (as I understand it) of the impetus of the Blockchain and why it’s valuable to you: 

In 2008, the United States saw poor lending and investment practices crash the world economy; the debt that created the mess didn’t just disappear. The United States Fed printed more money, thereby diluting the supply for a massive bail-out. Yes. Laws were enacted to stop the same type of disruption from occurring again. However, the banking system had already been exposed, and there are a million and one ways to fail. The banks who endorsed poor lending practices walked away without paying the full toll for their actions (it’s not that simple, but…). The banks we rely on daily are currently too big to fail and perhaps learn.

Imagine your future success enabled by the right technology tailored to your end-end goals.

Newsflash: The US dollar isn’t backed by real-life assets (ex: gold or silver). The true worth of the dollar is sentiment and consensus – just like Bitcoin. The point is that the US’s central banking system is centralized, which means we got the first taste of what kind of power our banks hold and what their practices are and can become if unchecked – which they largely are. That is why in 2009, global citizens got to work on how a new, better, and more transparent economy could work through a new currency – with blockchain technology as a foundation to grow that economy. The rise of a decentralized financial model using blockchain technology (a distributed ledger) revolutionized the financial industry.

Crypto was born and is easily distributed (now more than ever), stores value, and is easily traded through an open yet distributed ledger although crypto’s volatile nature has cause for much concern. Cyrpto is not blockchain but Crypto transactions are stored on the tech.

The term “follow the trail of money” has never been more powerful. The use of blockchain has expanded significantly past cryptocurrencies that seek to improve upon the dollar and other fiat systems since the Great Recession. Good money and economic strength through a thriving economy often mark the success of a civilization. The opposite can be said for a society with a weak currency (one that prints money) and a less productive economy (not stimulating the growth that those who printed the money had hoped for). The Fed has the unenviable job of controlling interest rates to stimulate the economy while hoping to balance the causation of inflation. Part of the challenge will be to not print more money as the US government has done i the past. Bloomberg as of June 26th has inflation rates at just above 4.5% which is an improvement from 2022 where is was estimated by Bloomberg to be almost double. 

Revolutionizing the way we buy, trade, and sell commercial real estate (CRE)

As the world becomes more integrated and experience focused on personal and financial gain, here is how the pioneers are shaping the future of real estate on blockchain tech. Check out the two (2) installments on opportunities for fractional CRE ownership on my homepage and what that means. Another fun project is Fractionvest (residential) out of Ontario, Canada, which just took a massive leap in regulatory processes.

I encourage you to do your due diligence on what could be your next opportunity to learn and grow alongside this evolving industry where fintech meets real estate and proptech moves spaces to be better, more intelligent, and more productive to support a thriving economy.

Finally, be sure to see more through the second installment of how RedSwan.io is further revolutionizing how we buy, sell, and trade, commercial real estate today.