Tag Archives: Joseph Bizub

The DAO of Real Estate

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Joseph Bizub and I posted The DAO of Real Estate to SSRN (and BePress). The abstract reads,

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) have long proven their worth as liquid securities that give investors access to many real estate asset classes. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (“DAOs”) are one of several blockchain real estate innovations seeking to provide a new path to those searching to invest in real estate. While the success of the DAO model of real estate investment is far from assured, these new investment options could offer real competition to REITs one day.

 

NYSBA Task Force on the Digital Economy (and the Real Economy)

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The New York Law Journal ran a story on the NYSBA’s new Task Force on Emerging Digital Finance and Currency. The NYSBA Press Release is here. Joseph Bizub, my co-author, and I are members of the Task Force. We are writing about the impact of fintech on real estate investment. The Press Release reads:

The New York State Bar Association has launched a task force to make recommendations on how New York should regulate virtual currencies and digital assets and advise the association what the new technology can do for its operations.

“The rapid growth of the metaverse/Web3 and the digital economy present a confluence of issues for lawyers,” said President Sherry Levin Wallach. “At the same time, this technology has the power to significantly change the way we do business, bank, and interact both personally and professionally. It’s important that we are in front of the issues and able to engage productively in this quickly evolving space.”

The task force will work to educate NYSBA members and the legal community about the impact of the digital economy and the legal issues that are likely to arise in representation of clients. It will also evaluate legislative and regulatory proposals and explore how the metaverse and Web3 can benefit the legal profession and bar associations.

“We are already seeing the effects of this trillion-dollar industry in many areas of practice including entertainment, business, intellectual property, tax, criminal and environmental law and trusts and estates,” Levin Wallach said. “The Task Force on Emerging Digital Finance and Currency will ensure that the New York State Bar Association has a voice in this innovative and emerging field.”

Jacqueline J. Drohan, partner at Drohan Lee, and Dana V. Syracuse, co-chair of Perkins Coie’s Fintech Industry Group, will co-chair the task force. The vice chair will be Dr. Carlos Mauricio Sakata Mirandola, CMSquare, São Paulo, Brazil. Marc Beckman, founding partner of DMA United, New York, NY, and Nancy Chanin, who oversees business development at DMA United, will be consultants to the task force.

New York State Bar Association President-Elect Richard C. Lewis will be the task force’s liaison to the association’s Executive Committee. Joseph Bizub and Dina Khedr of Brooklyn Law School will be law student members of the task force.

The members of the task force include:

Alyssa Barreiro, head of fiduciary risk, BNY Mellon, Binghamton, NY

Joshua Lee Boehm, partner, Perkins Coie, Phoenix, AZ

Julie T. Houth, staff attorney, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, San Diego, CA

Luca CM Melchionna, managing member, Melchionna, New York, NY

John W. R. Murray, partner, Foley Hoag, New York, NY

Jeffrey D. Neuburger, head of Blockchain group, Proskauer Rose; New York, NY

Rory J. Radding, partner, Mauriel Kapouytian Woods, New York, NY

David J. Reiss, professor of law and research director, Brooklyn Law School Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship, New York, NY

Jason Schwartz, tax partner and co-head of Digital Assets and Blockchain Practice, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, Washington, DC

Robyn T. Williams, associate, Devlin Law Firm, Cleveland, OH

How Fintech Cos. May Transform Real Estate Investment

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Justin Peralta

Joseph Bizub

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I published How Fintech Cos. May Transform Real Estate Investment along with Joseph Bizub and Justin Peralta in Law360. It opens,

Until relatively recently, real estate with a small footprint — one-to-four-family homes as well as small retail, office and industrial buildings — were generally within the sole purview of small investors who invested locally.

Today, because of technological advances, these owner-occupants and investors face significant competition from institutional investors and an emerging class of decentralized finance investors.

These fintech companies are bringing new approaches to the challenges that real estate investing traditionally poses: illiquidity, lack of capital, lack of diversification and uneven access to market information.

This article focuses on how decentralized finance investors in particular are meeting those challenges and suggests that while much of their vaunted innovation is simply old wine in new bottles, there is good reason to think that they will be driving a lot of investment in small real estate transactions in the future, in no small part because people like shiny new bottles.