RealBlocks, the technology platform powered by the blockchain that allows for seamless fundraising and investing in real estate, announces that it has closed a $3.1M seed round led by Science Inc. with participation from Morgan Creek Digital, Zelkova Ventures, Ulu Ventures, and Cross Culture Ventures.
The RealBlocks solution democratizes access to private equity by tokenizing shares of some of the best funds in the world. By using a proprietary blockchain-based subscription process, RealBlocks enables tremendous efficiency and access allowing investors worldwide to directly purchase micro-shares in funds using either fiat currency (i.e. USD) or cryptocurrency.
"With the support of our strategic investors, we're accelerating development of our product and adoption of blockchain technology for real estate, an industry that previously hasn't seen much innovation," said Perrin Quarshie, Founder and CEO of RealBlocks. "This is a great opportunity to improve the investment experience for both sponsors and investors while also minimizing friction throughout the entirety of the process."
RealBlocks provides three key benefits:
- Global Access: Through utilizing blockchain infrastructure for distribution, RealBlocks allows for simpler and more efficient access for investors outside of the US, thereby accelerating capital formation for real estate sponsors.
- Institutional Real Estate: Investors on the RealBlocks platform will have access to offerings from some of the best private equity funds in the world.
- Instant Liquidity: Through the use of its bulletin board, RealBlocks provides investors with a mechanism for obtaining liquidity via peer-to-peer trading for an otherwise illiquid asset class.
RealBlocks investors receive an asset-backed token or share that represents ownership of an offering. Users have the ability to trade their ownership via a peer-to-peer bulletin board with investors across the globe. RealBlocks is helping to usher in the token economy, and real estate is just one of the many industries that will benefit from the tokenization of assets.
"2019 is going to be an incredibly important year for blockchain projects," said Anthony Pompliano, Founder & Partner at Morgan Creek Digital. "After years of experimentation and development, the market expects these companies to solve real problems now. RealBlocks is one of the teams that has a working product and has shown they can execute at a high level — that is one of the reasons why we are excited to invest. One of our core theses at Morgan Creek Digital has been that every stock, bond, currency, and commodity will be tokenized at some point in the future. RealBlocks has developed a solution that is going to help the best players in the real estate industry join the blockchain revolution."
RealBlocks is supported by Science Blockchain, who has supported and invested in companies leveraging blockchain technology to enhance and revolutionize how brands do business.
"We invested in RealBlocks because this use of blockchain technology has real-world benefits that perfectly align with our investment model," said Greg Gilman, co-founder and Managing Director of Science Inc. "We believe that the real estate market, like nearly all asset classes, will be increasingly data-driven and digitized or digitally native, and we look forward to building on our history of transformative companies."
About RealBlocks
RealBlocks is a blockchain-powered real estate investment platform that tokenizes shares of private equity funds, which allows real estate sponsors to 1) sell shares to both domestic and international investors, 2) accept digital and fiat currency, and 3) enable peer-to-peer trading via a bulletin board. For more information, please visit www.realblocks.com or follow us on Twitter @RealBlocks.
About Science Inc.
Science Inc. is the disruptive media, marketing and brand building company that creates, invests, acquires and scales successful digital businesses. Science brings together the best ideas, talent, resources and financing through a centralized platform. The platform is leveraged to develop new businesses, provide emerging startups with operational strategy and capital and transform later-stage Internet ventures with new talent and innovation. The company has co-founded and invested in more than 70 companies, including Dollar Shave Club, DogVacay, HelloSociety, FameBit and Playvs, among others.
