Roan Yarn, CEO of Bricks Exchange at World Blockchain Summit 2024
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hello and welcome back to another
interview at the world blockchain Summit
day two Dubai I’m Adele the host founder
and CEO of Traders brawl in
collaboration with web3 TV today I’m
going to be interviewing uh rone from
bricks uh crypto exchange which I think
it’s not crypto exchange it’s a real
estate tokenization exchange is that
correct that’s exactly right right and
before we get to that I just want to
interview I just want to show uh for
those who are joining please welcome and
for those who are already joined welcome
back uh we are a platform an educational
platform here to interview Visionaries
entrepreneurs and people in this space
who are building build something and
you’re you’ll you’ll have a spot here so
uh with that said ran over to you tell
us a bit about yourself thank You Adele
pleasure to meet you and thanks for
allowing me to be here to share with you
the wonderful Prospect of tokenizing the
world’s real
estate um my background is in real
estate I have uh seen a lot in my career
working in urban economic
revitalization and the idea is that if
we point the technology towards the
problems of today then we can have a
better outcome for the individual for
communities and for the World At Large
right that’s great um now for the
audience sake maybe for those who are
still you know getting into the space
how is it that you’re bridging this
technology uh with real estate so you
know there’s a lot of different
approaches to this the first is you can
tokenize an asset and you basically can
run it based on the equity in a project
but we’re not simply interested in the
tokenization of real estate for its
value but also for its
income in the stock market you see
people buy on equities based on a number
of uh economic uh principles and uh
objectives they might be buying for
growth they might be buying for income
um in real estate you can do the same
and with to tokenization of real estate
you can buy for the longterm in the
growth of a prospect but you can also
buy for the regular reoccurring uh uh e
economic income um thirdly depending on
where you are in the in the space
perhaps as a lender you can even use it
to manage risk in the space right
interesting interesting so um now coming
back to Bricks uh as founder and CEO um
what what has been like your personal
biggest achievements uh running this
this exchange so we are preed
pre-revenue so we’re still driving
ourselves up to the uh to the line that
said we have a awesome team of
developers and our exchange is on the
way to
uh to launching in June is what we
expect to launch um but the the biggest
accomplishment is that we
have millions of dollars of properties
ready to be flowing through the pipeline
the biggest challenge in the space is uh
is deal flow when you talk to
competitors they all talk about hey
there’s just not enough deals what can
we do and we kind of have that piece
figured out because you know we know
where to find the projects as I said
before for my background in real estate
provides me with a lot of insights and
the insights that I have will lead to uh
a lot of properties being flowing right
into the space without much difficulty
interesting that’s now with the deal
flow things that’s pretty common you
know being a startup especially in the
beginning stages of your career and the
business and your employees depend on
Deal flow how do you get deal flow when
when you’re still new it’s kind of like
a chicken and situation like you’re new
but at the same time you need money but
you need money because you’re new you
know what I mean you’re right you’re
right so it’s a bit of a hattick um
because you have to be able to as you
said um produce the chicken uh with the
egg so uh our approach is simple uh
we’re looking at the cycle of the real
estate market where we are currently um
it’s no secret that office spaces are
mostly empty nowadays due to a
post-pandemic world and so it’s a simple
exercise um today we have people who
want to buy a property but they don’t
have access to it because the interest
rates are high and uh the availability
of assets is limited while at the same
time ironically we have empty spaces so
you know without giving away too much
I’ll just say that um there’s a way to
rectify to to to resolve that issue uh
by simply repositioning current stocks
of real estate in the market
repositioning I mean by taking something
from one use perhaps the highest best
use of this building at one point was
office space but maybe today it’s
residential so there’s a lot of
different things that you can do but
that’s certainly what we’re looking at
interesting and and um like you said
you’re pre-seed uh you’re looking to
raise Capital are you looking to get
that first SE round uh is that going to
be this year what are you what are you
looking to to have we’re looking to have
that happen this summer because
you know we’re not a typical technology
company because we’re able to leverage
the fact that we’re in real estate and
with my background in it I know how to
create deals so we’ll be able to
drisk um the investment in our company
by virtue of the fact that we will
leverage up in getting a control of real
estate um we have the opportunity to buy
tranches of of assets uh mostly in in
the distressed
sector and that of course is going to
attract uh ver VC Capital because we’ve
deris it at that point it’s not based on
an idea it’s not even based on a concept
it’s it’s real estate real it’s real
right it’s a real world asset it’s a
real world asset but the beauty of this
real world asset is it can also produce
income so it’s not just something that
sits around like gold is terrific but it
doesn’t produce income but real estate
can do what gold does and more it can
produce a re a reoccurring cash flow and
just to play The Devil’s Advocate as
much as he can the only challenge with
real estate that I he that I hear all
the time time and time again is that
it’s it’s not as liquid as a crypto acid
or stock which you can just sell
directly to a peer all right this takes
you know lawyers it takes time it takes
people visiting the property wasting
agents time sometimes you know what I
mean yeah that’s right how do you
navigate that right right well you know
in in in this way we’ve turned something
that is a weakness into a strength
because what we’re able to do is to
create more liquidity in real estate by
virtue of the tokenization you know
you’re you’re exactly right if I buy a
property if I want to buy a property
today I have to wait 30 perhaps 45 days
to close on it and if you’re on the
other end of that transaction you’re
waiting 30 45 days to get your money but
the thing about it is if you tokenize
the asset set it means that you can sell
fractional shares of that in the Market
at any point at any hour of the day it’s
it’s 247 it doesn’t close on the
weekends and so that will provide
liquidity to owner operators but it will
also provide stability to owners of
crypto portfolios and it’s a little bit
better than putting it into a usdt or
usdc because rather than being subjected
to inflation it should as real estate
tends to do increase over
time and that’s fair and looking at it
from a retailer investor perspective if
I were to say own a share of a property
but the thing is when I say share I mean
like a token so I own I have some kind
of own ownership over it because I have
a token by by virtue of owning the nft
for example or the token uh the native
token how do I earn passively on it
because the only way I can earn is if
the property itself is being rented or
is sold and when it’s sold it’s 100%
sold that means I need to sell mine
that’s right that’s right no you raise
uh really good questions and concerns
you know it is a fact that the
tokenization doesn’t really permit you
to have a piece of the property that you
can just walk away with at any point
right and you can’t hold it in
perpetuity because you’re interested in
it only exists as long as the uh your
interest in really the the the ass The
Entity that owns that share of the
property so in that way it’s important
for people to recognize that this is not
the precise thing as owning real estate
right what it does is it creates a
derivative of ownership and so from that
standpoint whenever you get liquidated
on one project you can set it and forget
it on our portfolio on our platform uh
users will be able to buy a property and
not have to worry about resizing or
rebalancing their portfolio they can
select set it and forget we will
reinvest that in other projects for you
and so that will address part of your
question but then the other piece is the
reoccurring income well you’re right but
we provide staking rewards which will be
based on the
overall uh ecosystem of of of the
platform you know um obviously the
numbers have to make sense but it’s our
sense that people won’t have to rely on
the one property it will be rolled up
into a fund of properties and we’ll be
able to kick off a dividend based on a
fund so our opportunity is not just at
the deal level it’s really on the
ecosystem level but also uh based on a
fund that we would create around a group
of properties this will help stabilize
the income to make it more uh
predictable and with reoccurring
fantastic stuff well I mean uh let’s
watch and see the space um always
excited about new technology uh Ventures
um you you rightly uh address my
concerns and you acknowledge them but um
there’s a lot happening and it’s the
world spins very fast so it really does
so with that said uh Ron thank you so
much for your time Adele thank you for
having me appreciate it thank you so
much for watching hope you found this
insightful we will leave all the links
in description below to uh bricks
exchange BRX sorry bx. exchange BR rx.
exchange as well as Ron’s uh LinkedIn
profile so uh be sure to check those out
and for now thank you again and we’ll
see you next time time cheers thank you
thank you
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Join Adel as he interviews Ron Yarn, CEO of Bricks Exchange, at the World Blockchain Summit in Dubai. Discover how Bricks Exchange is revolutionizing the real estate industry through tokenization.
Learn about the challenges and opportunities of bridging blockchain technology with real estate assets, and explore the potential for passive income and liquidity in real estate investments.
Don’t miss this insightful conversation about the future of real estate and blockchain technology. Like, share, and subscribe for more!
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