A Swiss office just sold for $135 million on the blockchain

By Robert Stevens

A blockchain real estate firm, BrickMark, has bought a property in the heart of Zurich, Switzerland, for $135 million worth of BrickMark Tokens, it announced yesterday. 

BrickMark tokens are based on the Ethereum blockchain platform. In an interesting twist, owners of the tokens will receive income from rent generated by the property—although BrickMark has not revealed the specifics.

Dr. Alexander Koblischek, Managing Director of RFR Management GmbH, said, “We gladly accepted the Brickmark tokens as part of the purchase price. We assume that digital financial instruments will also significantly gain in importance in the real estate sector in the future.

BrickMark bought the property from RFR Holding GmbH. It’s an office building that has a lettable property of 1,600 square meters and a Swatch retail outlet on the ground floor. RHR will retain 20 percent of the shares in the property and will lead the process of developing the building. 

“We are breaking new ground for the real estate industry,” said Stephan Rind, CEO of BrickMark, in the statement. “There has never been a token-based real estate transaction of this magnitude. We are implementing what was once no more than a concept in the real estate industry.”

BrickMark will now finish up a financing round, which will see international investors plug in around $56 million into the property. 

BrickMark follows other firms in tokenizing shares in real estate. Real-estate firm Alliance Investments is tokenizing high-dollar properties, worth almost $650 million, on the Tezos blockchain. 

At the same time, AssetBlock, a real estate investment platform, has launched on the proof-of-stake blockchain platform Algorand to tokenize shares in hotels. But with a plummeting token price, things are not looking so good.

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