Chairman Muhammad BinGhatti said the move would allow investors with as little as AED 500 to access the real estate market
Imogen Lillywhite, ZAWYA
The Dubai-based developer behind the $204 million Bugatti-branded penthouse is looking into tokenising real estate purchases to allow investors with as little as AED 500 to access the market.
Muhammad BinGhatti, chairman of developer BinGhatti, said at the Sharjah Investment Forum that the company had started accepting cryptocurrency payments in 2021, and took AED 500 million ($136 million) in payments in digital currencies within the first nine months.
He said the organisation is now “toying with” tokenising real estate, to allow anyone, regardless of their wealth, to access the real estate market.
“We are working on as organisation, tokenising real estate to be able to trade it in a similar fashion as the stock market,” he said.
He said buyers would be able to buy as little as AED 500 worth of a real estate asset under tokenisation, and then trade it like stock.
Tokenisation involves creating a digital token representing an asset’s value on the blockchain, which can then be traded like a security.
In July, Hong Kong-based blockchain platform Mantra, which was reported earlier this year to be in the final stages of securing its Dubai licence, was reported to be tokenising $500 million of the real estate assets of Dubai-based MAG Group.
(Reporting by Imogen Lillywhite; editing by Daniel Luiz)