A Dubai apartment listing sold out in under two minutes this year. It was bought in fractions, with every buyer's name landing on the actual title deed. That pilot, run by Dubai's Land Depart
A Dubai apartment listing sold out in under two minutes this year. It was bought in fractions, with every buyer's name landing on the actual title deed.
That pilot, run by Dubai's Land Department and crypto regulator the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), is what Mark Tokuti, founder of tokenization platform Tokuti.io, calls a game changer for real estate. He spoke with TheStreet Roundtable during BVI Finance'sFintech on the Seas.
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Until now, tokenizing real estate usually involved a special purpose vehicle (SPV) and selling tokens of that entity. Holders owned securities, not property. Tokuti said the Dubai pilot tokenized the deed itself rather than creating a wrapper, and argued that this is what will unlock mass adoption.
"They have tokenized the actual property deeds, which is pretty amazing… Your name appears on the title deed. So it's not a security, it's actually part of a real estate (property). That is the game changer in real estate," he said.
That enables same-day settlement for transfers, compared with the weeks or months conventional property transfers can take, while preserving rights to the property itself.
Tokuti shared striking statistics about the pilot.
"You're talking about properties that sold out in two minutes. You're talking about 70% were first buyers."
Of two Prypco Mint listings, the second sold out in 1 minute 58 seconds, drawing 149 investors from 35 nationalities with more than 10,000 people on a waitlist. The first drew 224 investors, 70% of whom had never bought real estate in Dubai.
Tokuti also believes that other countries will replicate this model within their own borders, and is particularly interested in the British Virgin Islands, which have emerged as a global tokenization hub according to a recent report from BVI Finance.
"I believe what they've done in Dubai will be translated across the world. We've seen countries such as Georgia now picking up, and hopefully in the Caribbean as well," he explained.
Critics of tokenized real estate have argued that sovereign governments will not want to put deeds on blockchains when a lost seed phrase can mean permanently lost property. Dubai solved it, for now, by not allowing self-custody.
"Your tokens currently, you won't be able to withdraw them. They stay within the ecosystem. Now that may change over time," Tokuti said.
He predicts a middle-ground solution will have to be pursued, especially in the short term, starting with KYC-gated wallets, then eventually interoperability between compliant marketplaces.
