Around the Block With Jefferson Nunn – Interview With Yael Tamar at SolidBlock

Jefferson Nunn  0:08   

Welcome to another edition of Around the Block with Jefferson Nunn and I’m here today with very special guest. Yael Tamar with SolidBlock how’re you doing today? 

Yael Tamar  0:20   

Great, thank you. How are you? 

Jefferson Nunn  0:23   

Doing well, doing well. So, yeah, I been looking a little bit about your website and it looks fantastic, you know something about transforming real estate into traditional shares. Tell me more? 

Yael Tamar  0:39   

Of course, oh, real estate, as you know, is an antiquated or as you probably know, is an antiquated industry that, you know, it takes a long time to kind of move and, and, and change with technology. So, it has quite a few issues, one of which is the lack of liquidity. So, if you invest in real estate, it takes a long time to see the money. And so, you know, it’s not accessible to several investment to many investors because of that. And with Blockchain, we get a lot of liquidity and flexibility in the financial markets. And you know, which could be used for a variety of other assets on top of cryptocurrencies, right. And so real estate is a prime candidate for innovation and liquidity with Blockchain, because it really needs it. Right. So that’s what SolidBlock does. We enable liquidity by tokenizing real estate, basically putting real estate cap table or acid cap table on the blockchain, which lets investors, you know, trade or collateralize, their tokens to get access to loans, and just basically creates many opportunities within the real estate space or finance. 

Jefferson Nunn  2:05   

That sounds fantastic. Well, along those same lines, I mean, would it be possible for somebody to basically own a part of their apartment, for example, let’s say that apartment was up on your website, would you be able to buy like 100 shares of their own apartment?

Yael Tamar  2:26   

You can, and that probably, that that likely will happen in the near future, where you will be able to tokenize your, you know, the, or the owner of the apartment will tokenize. And you’ll be able to acquire a piece of the home where you live and maybe get rent discounts. Right. So that’s certainly possible. Right now, I think the best candidates for tokenization are larger, large commercial assets, because they’re easy, you know, they’re easier to appraise. And they’re kind of will be more liquid than an apartment, especially if it’s a relatively unknown market, right. So, for you to be able to kind of benefit from a from benefit from a tradability and liquidity, you need to have an asset that will trade, you know, as you know, or as you probably know, the small cap stocks on NASDAQ or other markets are not trading very well. Right. So, it’s always the markets are always looking for scale. 

Jefferson Nunn  3:30   

Right, right. Yeah, I was just thinking apartments, because there seem to be a whole rash of apartment buildings, at least in the city that I’m in, they put up some 10 or 15, different complexes and more coming, I’m sure. You know, you gotta go up as well as out right. So that’s why we’re thinking, you know, I’m sure somebody’s builders are looking for more liquidity. And I think we’ll probably see more that in these upcoming years. So, you mentioned a variety of different projects. So, what are the projects that you think are that you see, you’re most likely to try your platform? 

Yael Tamar  4:16   

So, basically, commercial assets. And, you know, beyond real estate, we also see some real-world assets that are good for tokenization and that’s kind of what companies are keeping on their balance sheets or what large financial institutions are keeping on their balance sheets right. So, it could be commodities, it could be private equity, it could be equipment, things like that, right. So, all of that could be tokenized to take advantage of, of liquidity and the financing opportunities right. So, in general, yielding assets are probably large commercial yielding assets are probably the best asked for best candidates for tokenization. Because it’s a very straightforward transaction you’re buying in to get returns. Right? And, and there is a relative security because this are a lower risk against because it’s an existing yielding asset. But we’ve seen some development projects being tokenized as well-meaning new projects that are in development. 

Jefferson Nunn  5:25   

Awesome. Yeah, I was just thinking, you know, I know somebody that had a few 1000 acres of land, and he was wanting to do something with solar, for example. And so, I thought that might be, you know, another excellent opportunity for them to even tokenize a solar project, for example, on the land. 

Yael Tamar  5:49   

Yeah. 

Jefferson Nunn  5:50   

Because otherwise that land it just sitting there, you know, might as well do something with it. So, I Well, that’s really amazing use of all the technology that had blockchain had to offer along with traditional finance, but, you know, looking to the future, I mean, there’s some web 3.0 projects or some metaverses projects. So, we’re where do you see blockchain and crypto and all that going next? 

Yael Tamar  6:25   

Blockchain and crypto in general, I think right now. So, we have kind of evolution, right, the blockchain and DeFi. And what we’ve seen in the beginning, but even like the language changes right, over time, so we’ve seen the beginning was cryptocurrencies. Now we’re mainly working with crypto assets, which they encompass more than just cryptocurrencies, right, all kinds of tokens, which include utility tokens, security tokens, right. And so, we’ve seen like a big evolution towards DeFi, because now you have enough of these crypto assets in the world, and they become liquid, right? So larger, of course, the ones with large, larger market cap are most liquid. And so now you can have a market where you lend out money, right. And, of course, of course, that’s basically based on the premise of liquidity of these assets.

So DeFi decentralized finance is generally a way to earn pretty good level of interest outside of the bank, right? Where people’s assets are pooled, investors assets are pooled together. And then lent out binds to lent out by institutions, right or to institutions. And so, and the individual lenders are getting pretty good rate, right? They’re getting a ring that a lending institution like a bank would get, which is amazing. So, they’re getting like retail lending ways that the bank would give you right for putting money in the checking account. And then like 2%, or 3%, or whatever. So, bottom line is this DeFi trend was dominating the market, right? Not even talking about, let’s say NF T’s or Metaverse, which are kind of little bit of a hype. And so DeFi is, is really the biggest trend. And when we’re looking at DeFi, a lot of investors are left out right now of the DeFi space. And that’s because, you know, they can only hold so much crypto, the majority of their assets, you know, which are well diversified are not in crypto, right. So, and right now, there is no good way for institutions or other investors to collateralize assets that are not crypto, but to get the same benefit, right of the, of the lending.

So that’s what we are doing nuts button in the next phase of SolidBlock. And I think that the market quickly realized that this this is the newest trend because they all are interested in tokenization ability to collateralize real world assets to access DeFi. And the second biggest trend, I think is what I mentioned in the beginning is a small house is not going to have as much liquidity as a large commercial project. So, we’re going to see aggregation, we’re going to see a few bunches a lot of homes together, then you’ll get a good index that you could probably sell. Now, of course, this version of an index will have likely much better indicator indication, then let’s say this pool of assets that was kind of the reason that of a big crisis and in 2008 Right, that was based on loans, but in this scenario, you will actually own the equity in these homes, right. And use appraisers in Individual appraisal to kind of gauge the, the valuation. So, it could be a better product, even for single family homes. But largely, I think most interesting thing is really commercial properties institutional grade, because they’re, you know, have much lower risk level attached to them. So, if you try to go to like a risk rating agency like Fitch or like one of Morningstar and stuff like that, then they would they would likely give a better rate to an index that that has this institutional quality.  

Jefferson Nunn  10:37   

Yeah, is amazing and very insightful. So, how did you come across the crypto space was it in? So, what was your first foray into this space? 

Yael Tamar  10:53   

So, so that was basically around 2016. I was before that, I was in a highly regulated industry, finance, I was working, you know, creating structured products, but from traditional public, publicly traded funds. And then I, I had to, you know, I was forced to leave I guess, in 2016, after, after a money laundering incident in our firm. And so, I, you know, obviously not by me, and I, I started my marketing company, then because even, you know, in the early 2010, I was pioneering marketing for institutions, kind of social media and digital marketing for institutions, which was like, the first time that, you know, they started having a LinkedIn account, you know, Facebook account, the traditional web tool, right, so I kind of pioneered web 204 institutions, right, in Israel, at least. So, I opened a marketing agency focused on kind of larger companies and so on, and I was I was having these problems sending paying my employees overseas. And so, I discovered blockchain that time because I couldn’t really deal with Blockchain before working that environment.

So, I discovered Bitcoin, sorry, for payments. And I was amazed and then from then on, I decided that’s it. I’m only doing blockchain and nothing else. And so, I was marketing for blockchain companies. And also, I was in blockchain transformation, meaning consulting firms how to introduce blockchain. And so, in 2018, I wanted to go back to being an entrepreneur. And then I, I specifically with ICOs that was kind of upset at that time of the amount of scam and the fact that kind of it was outside of regulation. And I said, I thought to myself, if only you know, why don’t we use the same mechanism for securities, right? Why don’t we sell securities on the blockchain? And so I went, and I researched open a company. And then I went, and I researched. I went and I researched the space, and I found SolidBlock, which was founded by my co-founder, Yuval Wirzberger. And we joined forces. And that’s how SolidBlock started. 

Jefferson Nunn  13:29   

Wow, that’s an amazing growth story. And if I think it’s very interesting, a lot of the new folks that are coming into this space are wondering, you know, what opportunities might be out there? For them, what would you say to somebody that’s just now approaching and wanting to learn more what should be the first thing that they should do? 

Yael Tamar  13:53   

Two things they can number one, go to our podcast, which is called BlockSolid, a lot of industry information there. So, some on real estate tokenization, some on blockchain and security and things like that. We also have a very vibrant blog on the website, solidblock.co. And we also have, we also have a course called tokenization, one on one and I’m happy to give a 20% discount to anybody listening here and I’ll give you a discount code. 

Jefferson Nunn  14:25   

Oh, thank you, that’s gonna be fantastic. That information will be at the top of the podcast page for our listeners. So amazing. Well, do you have any final thoughts or tips to share with our listeners? 

Yael Tamar  14:40   

Um, I just want to say, you know, tokenization is the future in my opinion, and I would love to hear if anybody here agrees with things otherwise, I’m on @yaeltamar on Twitter, on LinkedIn, you know, everywhere, and I’m hopeful that you will diversify your investments from let’s say crypto and NFTs into also a security token, or some sort of a derivative that will come out. And, you know, looking forward to making friends and that are among your listeners. Yep.  

Jefferson Nunn  15:19   

All right. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. It was very informative. So, thank you very much for your time.  

Yael Tamar  15:25   

Absolutely. Have a good day.