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First-Ever Real Estate Blockchain Portal Set to Launch in the UK

OpenBricks, a new blockchain-powered property portal in the UK, is set to be launchedin January 2020 following months of testing and preparation with six agents.

OpenBricks is eyeing to be the world’s first blockchain-based portal as it won’t have any centralized authority, as well as many staff because it will thrive on agents’ own servers using a distributed ledger network.

It expects to attract many real estate agents who are faced with huge costs of utilizing the main portals. Each branch is to be charged £100.

The Chief Operating Officer at OpenBricks, Adam Piggott, noted: “The blockchain technology will prevent us from turning the screws and hiking up the fees; it will be the agents who decide that and not the board of OpenBricks. It’s your portal.”

He added: “Our decentralized portal will be a big ‘spider’s web’ network linking agents together and enabling them to control how they share their listings rather than handing it over to a portal – because with OpenBricks there won’t be a central entity.”

Piggott believes that the OpenBrix model is different because it is blockchain-powered for the first time outside the financial spectrum across the globe. Additionally, each estate agency will be required to pay the same amount. They will also be provided with one vote that they can utilize when being balloted on issues like marketing budgets.

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IRS Cracking Down on Cryptocurrency Tax Evasion, Seeks Private Crypto Tax Contractors

Updated on 21/07/2020 11:00 AM HKT

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has requested help from independent consultants to crack down on non-compliance in cryptocurrency tax.

On May 12, the IRS sent out a Statement of Work (SOW) soliciting private contractors to aid in auditing tax returns related to cryptocurrency and virtual assets.

An email first reported by CryptoTrader.Tax read, “The Internal Revenue Service is engaging outside contractors to assist our Revenue Agents in calculating taxpayers’ gains or losses as a result of their transactions involving virtual currency. We are placing a few single-case contracts as pilots with a goal of publishing a solicitation and request for proposal for a larger multi-case contract. Attached is a sample Statement of Work describing the types of services we are looking for. I wanted to make you aware of our efforts in case your company has any interest in pursuing this type of work.”

Statement of Work Requirements

Per the SOW, the IRS is requesting help, from FinTech companies that develop or are proficient in cryptocurrency tax software, to aid in the reconciliation of reported crypto gains and losses on the tax returns of US citizens.

The process described in the SOW aims at using software to systematically obtain records of cryptocurrency transactions data from exchanges, wallets, data sites, and other data sources to create a more detailed and transparent tax report for the taxpayers under consideration.

Source: IRS SOW

It appears the service sought by the IRS is an efficient tool to compare information reported on tax returns with the information provided by exchanges and digital asset service providers to discern if any further audit should be carried out.

IRS More Knowledgable than Ever on Crypto

In Notice 2014-21, the IRS explained that they have applied general principles of tax law to determine that cryptocurrencies or virtual currency are classified as property for federal tax purposes.

In October 2019, the IRS announced the addition of a question to the US tax return form obligating citizens to disclose their cryptocurrency holdings as well as gains and losses.

The recent SOW sent out by the IRS highlights that the federal agency has become far more knowledgeable in the cryptocurrency space. In a section of the SOW entitled, “Services to be Provided”, they detailed how complex an individual tax return calculation can become when dealing with cryptocurrency as any one user could have “hundreds and thousands” of transactions in a single year on multiple platforms.

The request for aid is so far just a request and no crypto tax service providers have been legally forced to hand their users’ data over to the IRS. The SOW does state, however, that the contractors who do decide to take on the project will be required to testify at trial to explain any discrepancies in data for the IRS. “While more updates like this are expected in the coming years, services like Taxbit remain on top of government regulations of crypto and aim to make doing your taxes as easy as possible.”

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Benefits and Use cases of Blockchain in Real Estate Sector

Without a doubt, technological innovations and advancements are reshaping the dimensions of the globe in which we are currently living. In the last few decades, great strides were made from physical payments to digital payments, from cash to cards, and from desktop to mobile.

Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology appears to be the next major leap in that evolution.

The enormous asset class of the world is real estate. Real estate professionals and commercial enterprises recognise the revolutionary impact of blockchain technology to streamline payments and optimise commercial and retail property sales. Not only this, blockchain technology plays a pivotal role in increasing access to real estate funds and investment opportunities. From the rental market to general real estate transactions, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology can transform the way landlords and tenants do their business.

Let’s dig into the benefits, use cases, and implementation of blockchain technology in real estate.

How Blockchain Technology proves to be beneficial for the Real Estate Industry?

Commercial real property consists of a notable portion of transaction pursuit and international economic assets. According to a Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) report, the overall size of the professionally managed global real estate investment market evolved from $7.4 trillion to $8.5 trillion from 2016 to 2017, respectively. The real property market of the current era consists of several independent and isolated networks with blurriness and transactional resistance between current systems.

Blockchain technology provides the following benefits to the real estate industry:

Blockchain technology provides effortless access to secondary market opportunities.
It brings forth access to broad investor pools because of ownership fractionalisation.
Blockchain technology gives accessibility to global asset distribution.
Automated processes help in reducing costs.
Blockchain technology provides process efficiency for underlying industry operations.
It permits the securitisation and tokenisation of real property assets.

Blockchain technology allows data accessibility which is crucial to make better investment decisions, enhance transparency and portfolio management.

Apart from this, digital securitisation of real estate properties is one of the most existing ways blockchain technology benefits the real estate industry. Ideally, as a landlord or tenant, that may necessarily want a groundbreaking solution to send and receive cryptocurrency payments in real-time privately, conveniently, securely while streamlining market verticals across the board.

Use Cases of Blockchain Technology in Real Property

Enterprise blockchain technology modifies the real estate industry with the following ten use cases:

Urban planning
Project financing
instantaneous accounting
Management of property
Leasing and payments
Identity verification and KYC of Inventor and tenant
Loan and mortgage tokenisation or securitisation
Construction and development of property
Real property investments and asset management
Sales, registries, and reassignment of properties and lands

Influence of Blockchain Technology on Estate Management

Large-scale estate management organisations go through incompetent oversights of their universal profiles and holdings. Thanks to blockchain technology as it streamlines rental payments and collections. It facilitates data sharing and makes the life of landlords easy. Blockchain technology also provides premium due diligence across the portfolio. This allows cost and time savings. Moreover, it enhances operational efficiency and generates sustainably richer data. That data facilitates making critical strategic decisions.

Influence of Blockchain Technology on Leasing and Payments

Distributed ledger technology allows leases to be signed as well as paid on-chain in real-time. This automates dividend and rental payments to property owners and eliminates the need for manual reconciliations. Also, smart contracts help in the automatisation of different types of remittances and fees. This stimulates the appropriate behaviour of tenants, landlords, and service providers.

Influence of Blockchain Technology on Real-Time Accounting

Asset owners and investors benefit from near-intermediate and automated accounting as cash flows and property ownership is recorded on-chain. The preparation of annual financial statements, including statements of cash flows, income statement, or balance sheet, will be conducted in the upcoming years with the potential for real-time audits. It enables several breakthroughs in investor relations, regulatory oversight, and compliance.

Influence of Blockchain on Urban Planning

Property development usually encounters the absence of valuable input from the community. The public feels disenfranchised because the local communities don’t express their preferences during the planning process. Blockchain-based planning platforms include feedback loops between stakeholders, educational resources, and token-based participation incentives. This integrates local communities in the property development value chain, encourages community engagement, and improves developer services for sustainable success.

Conclusion

Obviously, blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are still in the early stages of development. Several industries and investors are curious about what this revolutionary technology has more to serve this world in approaching years. The real estate market is already facing a significant impact of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in the form of smart contracts, tokenisation, and verification. Moreover, it has provided new opportunities for the sale of property and acquisition for real estate investors.

Knowledge, expertise, skills, and advice of real estate professionals are important to commercial buyers in the real property market. However, accounting, document processing, liability management, and processing of securities will inevitably transform. Hence, it’s only time to tell us which improvements and advancements of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are the lasting ones.

More Crypto Firm Tenants Settle in Hong Kong Central CBD Offices

Hong Kong Land Holdings Ltd (SGX: H78) announced Wednesday that the real estate firm has signed a lease contract with a crypto firm, embracing the first crypto company to use their offices in the city’s central business district (CBD).

Hong Kong-based HashKey Group, a blockchain solution and an end-to-end digital asset management firm, will move to one entire floor in Three Exchange Square owned by the Hong Kong Land. According to the press release, the new office occupies over 10,000 square feet, which is “the first digital asset financial service group move to Hong Kong Land’s central portfolio,” the real estate firm said in the statement.

The statement added that the leasing agreement will commence on Thursday, 16th Sep., which “brings traditional financial institutions with blockchain and virtual assets firm in one ecosystem,” the statement added.

Prior to the relocation, HashKey locates at Cyberport. Michel Lee, Executive President at HaskKey, said the company is glad to move to the centre of the business community.

“We are excited to be the first digital assets firm in Exchange Square and look forward to expanding our footprint to Central, the heart of Hong Kong.”

Hong Kong Land, meanwhile, also welcomes HashKey’s latest move as well:

“HashKey’s decision to move to Central and the Hongkong Land portfolio exemplifies a growing ‘flight to quality’ as financial markets participants, in particular, see the benefits of being part of a core Central ecosystem that supports their business and talent development goals.”

Central is considered the traditional CBD in Hong Kong, mainly dominated by conventional financial institutions and other business corporations. In 2018, crypto trading platform BitMex leased one of the floors of the Cheung Kong Center, according to Bloomberg.

Yet, the rent has significantly dropped amid the pandemic of Covid-19. The rent has fallen by 26.4 per cent from their peak in the second quarter of 2019, which provides an incentive for some firms to return to the core region, according to local media South China Morning Post, citing experts said.

With the trending development on cryptocurrency, Hong Kong Financial regulator, The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), continues to strengthen its supervision over the crypto sectors. Last month, SFC warned of a high risk against Initial Decentralized Offerings (IDOs) or Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs) as Unauthorized Investment Schemes. Earlier this month, a senior official of SFC stated that the authority is obligated to crack down on unauthorised crypto transactions while properly developing crypto. The administration said it should protect investors’ interests from being deceived or facing fraud by illegal crypto activities.

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