Kunal Bhasin, co-leader for digital assets at KPMG Canada, stated that institutional operators will bring real estate into DeFi. According to him, tokenization could change the owners of large commercial buildings.
Summary
KPMG: according to Kunal Bhasin, it will be institutional operators who bring real estate into DeFi
In an interview given during the Toronto Collision Conference, Kunal Bhasin, co-leader for digital assets at KPMG Canada, expressed his thoughts regarding the real estate sector and Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
Bhasin stated that the real estate sector is in the hands of institutional operators of DeFi. They will be the ones to purchase shares of high-value commercial properties as soon as opportunities arise.
To give a practical example, the co-leader of KPMG said that tokenization could allow “family office” to own a slice of the main shopping center in Toronto, the Eaton Center, and other large buildings.
This would mean that the new owners of large commercial buildings will be DeFi operators, instead of the historical real estate and pension fund managers with large financial resources.
Bhasin, however, emphasizes that such a situation will be possible only when the DeFi activity by institutions will be more “authorized”.
“The institutions recognize the efficiency that a decentralized financial technology brings, but they want to know the participants they interact with”.
KPMG: real estate in DeFi only thanks to institutional operators and a more authorized environment
The co-leader of KPMG, Bhasin, is convinced that once the environment is more “authorized” and institutional operators of DeFi are active, real estate will fully enter Decentralized Finance.
In fact, Bhasin has predicted that this will become one of the major institutional use cases in the cryptocurrency sector.
Well actually, in El Salvador where Bitcoin has been legal tender since 2014, real estate is already part of the country’s digital revolution.
Just in April, in fact, Bitfinex Security introduced the debt token in El Salvador. These are tokenized bonds that are used to obtain the necessary capital to build a large Hampton by Hilton hotel complex, near the international airport of the South American country.
Specifically, the debt token HILSV aims to raise 6.25 million dollars, with a 10% premium and a duration of 5 years in exchange for a minimum investment of 1,000 dollars.
The token HILSV will run on the Bitcoin sidechain, Liquid Network, and will be traded in US dollars and in the stablecoin USDT.
The situation in Spain: buying houses in Bitcoin
In February 2024, then, more than tokenization of the real estate sector, it was discussed how in Spain it is possible to buy a house in Bitcoin.
In fact, the real estate agency Spain Homes has partnered with Binance Pay, the contactless payment app from Binance, to make it possible to purchase properties in crypto.
Spain is not new to this kind of thing. A sporadic case from 2022 involved a villa in Marbella put up for sale by its owner at the price of 4.3 million euros, with the possibility of paying for it also in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).
