I’m a fan of altcoins, crypto currency, digital tokens, etc. Bitcoin, ether, litecoin, and their like have a new business model for how they work and what they can do for people and businesses. The blockchain itself has so many possibilities as to be maybe the biggest invention since the iPhone. You can find new articles every single day on applications for the blockchain – insurance, contracts, credit/loans, purchases, etc.
Adoption of the blockchain will slowly occur across many industries and use cases. But I suspect that it will not be taken too seriously in real estate for a long time.
Why? Because real estate brokerages are struggling to use such simple tools as SalesForce. Convincing them to move to a researchable, relatively open, standardized deal tracking system will be a Herculean task. The sharing of any information is a hurdle that too many in the industry are struggling with which is hampering even commonly used tech in other industries. Trying to move to a platform that makes everything theoretically researchable would be a difficult sell.
Maybe there will be a sea change in CRE (commercial real estate) but it isn’t likely in the next several years. The way money works in the industry will continue to hamper technology innovation and adoption. Until someone disrupts the commission model I have little confidence in radical innovation being adopted.