n BLOCKCHAIN
“I can put [crypto] on the debt market, earning
3 percent a month lending it out on the
blockchain. It’s peer-to-peer lending 3.0.”
— Graham McBain, director, McClellan Innovation Center
it — a time-consuming process that involves a lot
of research. So in November 2018, First American
Financial Corporation, one of the country’s largest
title insurers, announced it was launching a block-
chain to be shared among participating title insurers
that contains all of their policies, thus “streamlin-
ing the search process and increasing the accuracy
of searches for prior title insurance policies,” as the
company put it in a release. (First American is keep-
ing the details confidential, declining a request to
speak for this story. The American Land Title Asso-
ciation, which represents insurers, also did not re-
spond.)
All of this, say proponents, will dramatically cut
the amount of time needed for a real estate trans-
action. “If everything is on the blockchain, closing
could happen in six hours instead of 60 days,” claims
Shtofman. With all of the relevant data for a sale on
a trusted blockchain, Howie envisions a day not too
distant when signing a contract on a house will in-
volve clicking a “buy it now” button.
Still, in real estate some breakthrough block-
chain ideas need buy-in from key partners, espe-
cially governments. Among the many blockchain
initiatives that the XYO Network has in progress is
a partnership, in its early stages, with real estate
giant RE/MAX Mexico to build a blockchain-based
land title registry. But its success depends critical-
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ly on Mexican government agencies agreeing to
participate. That’s by no means a guarantee. RE/
MAX Mexico is working government channels now,
says Justin Fortier, XYO’s point person for the proj-
ect, who works out of the Sacramento office.
Other arenas may be more amenable if an inter-
mediary is more easily replaced. In finance, for ex-
ample, blockchain technology could let companies
sell shares directly to customers instead of through
a broker. “How hard would it be for Apple to toke-
nize their company, say in Apple Coins?” asks Bea-
dles, of Monarch Wallet creater Splash Factory. That
would kill the brokers and save customers a lot on
transaction costs, he says.
The same pattern could hold with peer-to-peer
lending, which now is enabled by web platforms
like Prosper and LendingClub that pair investors
with people and businesses looking for loans. With
blockchain, lenders and borrowers would find each
other on a blockchain and avoid the transaction
fees charged by platforms. McBain says that already
with cryptocurrency, “I can put [crypto] on the debt
market, earning 3 percent a month lending it out on
the blockchain. It’s peer-to-peer lending 3.0.”
THE FUTURE IS … WHEN?
Blockchains could bring all of that to pass, but the
applications designed to run on them are still most-