Fundament Blockchain Tokenization platform in talks with GCC Regulatory authorities
Fundament visits ADGM to discuss cooperation for token offerings
UNLOCK interviewed the founders of Fundament, a company which is offering the first real-estate token fully approved by the German Financial Market Authority ( BaFin).
According to Both Florian Glatz, and Robin Matzke Co-founders of Fundament Group, “In essence we are a tokenization platform as the funding issuance business hadn’tt changed for many decades; we decided that using blockchain would provide the same opportunities on the capital market without compromising on investor protection. As such it is our mission to set up institutional grade financial products that are fully regulated by and compliant to German and European capital market laws to be open to all classes of investors.”
Fundament received approval from BaFIN earlier this year for its Ethereum real-estate token, a 280 million USD offering. The token is open to any retail investor anywhere with no minimum investment restriction. Fundament’s token is backed by five separate construction projects, three in Hamburg, one in Frankfurt and one in the university town of Jena. The portfolio, including residential, commercial and hotel properties, would total more than 680,000 square feet upon completion. The company projects a return on the projects in the mid-to high single digits.
As Florian and Robin explain, “Utilizing the legal possibilities available, in July of this year we essentially introduced a fully regulated real-estate bond as a token, open to a global audience both retail and institutional investors. Investors can purchase the token using not only Fiat but also Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. This is disruptive in itself especially since there is no minimum investment amount so basically a farmer in Africa could potentially buy the token.”
While Fundament can sell the token globally, and across Europe, in the USA they can only sell to accredited investors through Tritaurian Capital.” Florian adds, “We launched our private sale and focused on institutional tickets especially in Europe, although we cannot disclose numbers, so far everything is looking very good, we will launch the biggest STO in history mid next year.”
In terms of return on investment, Florian and Robin states, “Token holders will be paid a dividend of around 4-8 percent, and when the run time of fund is over and there is an exit the holders will receive complete value that was within this fund.” When asked about trading these token on secondary markets, both explained, “We believe secondary markets are extremely important and we are aware that the infrastructure is being built for these markets and licenses being acquired. By Q2 of next year there will be at least 5-10 of these alternative decentralized trading values and we intend to be listed in all of them.”
Fundament is not only aiming to provide the real-estate token but also wants to offer many more asset classes. According to Florian and Robin, “We want to offer attractive yet hard to offer asset classes to everyone, examples would include renewable energy, private equity venture capital asset classes that are of interest to millennial generation.” They add, “We are looking to tokenize sports fund which has a variety of athletes as sports tech has a high appeal to generation Z and millennial.”
As for the MENA region in general and GCC in particular, Fundament is very much interested in working with the region to use tokenization as a means to not only enhance FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) to the region but also allow those in the region to invest in other markets. As Florian and Robin stated, “We have visited the region and have met with few regulators and discussed how to connect capital markets in the region to those in Germany or Eruope easily and transparently.”
In their recent visit they met with officials from ADGM (Abu Dhabi Global Market), Florian comments, “we had fruitful discussions with ADGM who seemed open and willing to discuss tokenization. They also were well versed on the topic of tokenization as they are one of the most sophisticated regulators globally. They are really serious about this technology and are looking to forge and facilitate an agreement between BaFIN who recently released their regulations in Germany.”
Fundament team also made visits to Kuwait, Bahrain and KSA and hope to forge strong partnerships in the region.
