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I buy and sell NFTs that represent fractional ownership in real estate. Well technically they represent ownership in an LLC that owns the real estate. Governa

I buy and sell NFTs that represent fractional ownership in real estate. Well technically they represent ownership in an LLC that owns the real estate. Governance is done via votes of the token holders. There is a company that facilitates the transactions, but they don't hold or manage the real estate. This type of investing has long been done on paper, but the blockchain makes it much more liquid. Selling your fractional ownership in a property was onerous at best, and took a long time and a lot of fees. Now it's just sending a token to someone else in exchange for money (fiat or crypto). Another advantage is that it doesn't matter if the facilitator goes out of business, because all the ownership records are on a public blockchain instead of their secret central database. I generally agree with you, A LOT of crypto is crap and could be better solved with a central database. But there are valid use cases.

dmitriid 4y ago
That "sending a token"? Unenforceable and still need to be backed up by, you know, an actual paper contract in the real world. Also, this comment nails it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33002963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33002963
- jedberg 4y ago
  The piece of paper (the LLC formation that owns the house) literally says “whoever has control of these tokens owns this LLC in proportion to how many tokens they have”. And yes it’s backed by a paper contract. That’s why I’m ok with it. But it’s still gives me liquidity and ownership security I couldn’t get with a central database.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > the LLC formation that owns the house > backed by a paper contract So.... What's the point of blockchain in this case? Other than "hey, we have blockchain"? > But it’s still gives me liquidity and ownership security What gives you ownership security is the paper contract, not some bytes in some database.
  - grepfru_it 4y ago
    You cannot have partial control of an LLC without being part of the LLC. That would be a C-Corp. Members of the LLC have to be defined in the articles (with filing fees every time it changes) and are liable for criminal activities (this includes tax evasion). For everything you want a c corporation provides the exact same guarantees while not becoming a money laundering hotspot
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
gus_massa 4y ago
> This type of investing has long been done on paper, Fractional ownership in real estate has a long history of scams.
RC_ITR 4y ago
>This type of investing has long been done on paper, but the blockchain makes it much more liquid. Being digital makes it much more liquid. There's literally nothing about fractional real estate ownership that needs distributed consensus. >Another advantage is that it doesn't matter if the facilitator goes out of business, because all the ownership records are on a public blockchain instead of their secret central database. You could solve that problem by only working with companies that have publicly readable centralized databases? Again no need for distributed consensus.
- pcl 4y ago
  I’m a crypto fence sitter, and I mostly think these things are scams. But I think that the distributed-public-database thing has real value. Companies come and companies go, and opening up data to the scrutiny of daylight is sorta a prisoner’s dilemma problem much of the time. Building a long-lived business on top of a by-design-public data store seems like a really cool thing. Sure, any company could decide to host a Postgres instance on AWS with world-readable creds. But does that happen? And what happens when the company goes under? Who keeps paying the AWS bills?

dmitriid 4y ago

That "sending a token"? Unenforceable and still need to be backed up by, you know, an actual paper contract in the real world. Also, this comment nails it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33002963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33002963

jedberg 4y ago
The piece of paper (the LLC formation that owns the house) literally says “whoever has control of these tokens owns this LLC in proportion to how many tokens they have”. And yes it’s backed by a paper contract. That’s why I’m ok with it. But it’s still gives me liquidity and ownership security I couldn’t get with a central database.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > the LLC formation that owns the house > backed by a paper contract So.... What's the point of blockchain in this case? Other than "hey, we have blockchain"? > But it’s still gives me liquidity and ownership security What gives you ownership security is the paper contract, not some bytes in some database.
- grepfru_it 4y ago
  You cannot have partial control of an LLC without being part of the LLC. That would be a C-Corp. Members of the LLC have to be defined in the articles (with filing fees every time it changes) and are liable for criminal activities (this includes tax evasion). For everything you want a c corporation provides the exact same guarantees while not becoming a money laundering hotspot
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

gus_massa 4y ago

> This type of investing has long been done on paper, Fractional ownership in real estate has a long history of scams.

RC_ITR 4y ago

>This type of investing has long been done on paper, but the blockchain makes it much more liquid. Being digital makes it much more liquid. There's literally nothing about fractional real estate ownership that needs distributed consensus. >Another advantage is that it doesn't matter if the facilitator goes out of business, because all the ownership records are on a public blockchain instead of their secret central database. You could solve that problem by only working with companies that have publicly readable centralized databases? Again no need for distributed consensus.

pcl 4y ago
I’m a crypto fence sitter, and I mostly think these things are scams. But I think that the distributed-public-database thing has real value. Companies come and companies go, and opening up data to the scrutiny of daylight is sorta a prisoner’s dilemma problem much of the time. Building a long-lived business on top of a by-design-public data store seems like a really cool thing. Sure, any company could decide to host a Postgres instance on AWS with world-readable creds. But does that happen? And what happens when the company goes under? Who keeps paying the AWS bills?