Have you ever thought about owning some of the best properties in the world? How about owning them in some of the best locations?
With tokenization, this is possible!
While the rest of the world reels from the many issues that have bedeviled the finance industry, innovation continues in the crypto space.
Vacation rental properties, before now have remained in the domain of hedge funds and the big guns.
Now, anybody can own a piece of real estate, anywhere.
This could change the world.
It just might!
Rui Vasconcelos, founder at YourWayWay explains.
Rui Vasconcelos, Founder at YourWayWay
E-Crypto News:
How can fractional investing provide solutions for individuals who want to invest in real estate but don’t have the capital to do so?
That’s a great question that also kind of answers itself. When you look at real estate investments, we’re usually talking about big investments that are led by hedge funds or banks, or big corporations.
So by fractionalizing the investment, and splitting the investment into multiple parts, we are allowing smaller investors, people with smaller savings that want to invest in real estate to take part in this investment, because it’s a safe asset, it’s a real-world asset.
It’s a big benefit for them. This is, of course, allowed by blockchain technology that allows us to create fractionalization of real-world assets. And we also see that this technology is making this industry more efficient, more transparent and because it’s much more transparent.
Related:Is Asset Tokenization the Future of the Crypto Space? (Roundtable Interview)
E-Crypto News:
How have successful presales brought some measure of confidence back to the crypto space? Please, can you provide examples?
Well, the pre-sales that we did before the deals that we did before have been done more institutionally. So we’ve been working with hedge funds, we’ve been managing properties that we don’t own, and we are now entering the crypto space managing properties we do own.
We will be having our first crypto investment in the next few days. We have the property lined up. And it’s going to be happening very, very soon. But the investments we have done so far have either been hedge fund backed or have been in properties that we manage, but do not own.
E-Crypto News:
How have cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology enabled innovation in the real estate space?
Well, it’s very early in the game, actually to understand how blockchain technology has impacted the real estate space. But this is why we are leading the charge, because we believe this is the future. The real estate market has been an exclusive market for big players.
This is what we are changing, we want to bring everyone into the game. Blockchain technology allows us to fractionalize and tokenize real-world assets. And this will allow every other investor who hasn’t had the opportunity before to come into the real estate market to come in now with YourWayWay, and we can start making a difference in this world.
E-Crypto News:
Please, can you tell us about YourWayWay?
Absolutely. So, YourWayWay is a decentralized marketplace for real estate assets. And these real estate assets are marketed as vacation rental properties. We offer every crypto holder, every person who’s interested in yielding his or her crypto, a way to do it with real-world assets. And we believe this is a huge deal for yielding your crypto because this creates another level of security.
That is a bust-proof way of yielding your crypto. So even if the deal goes wrong, you’d still have the added security of having a property that is there to ensure that your crypto didn’t lose value.
And if push came to shove, you’d be able to sell the property to pay back everyone’s crypto, although that, fortunately, hasn’t been the case for our investments, we do a great deal of due diligence before each investment. And has allowed us to make successful investments so far.
But this is the vision that your way wants to bring, we want to bring real-world assets to a decentralized market, where every little investor has a word to say on how each investment is made. Each investment is independent of the next. So if you choose to invest in project A and not project B, you will still have a word to say on how project A which you invested in, is managed and how your yield is assured.
This is our vision. This is how we are changing the market.
Related:Key Steps in Developing an NFT Marketplace
E-Crypto News:
How are 12.5% APY returns possible?
12.5% APYs are possible because we invest in high-demand areas with high value properties that allow us to market the properties at very high rates, such as $1,500 a night or $2,000 a night. So this way, we can assure every investor that we will return a 12.5% APY. So when people look for properties for their vacations, we are looking at a top market with top rates, this allows us to pay 12.5% APY.
E-Crypto News:
How big are the vacation rental markets? Please, can you give us a few numbers?
So the vacation rental market closed in 2022 roughly at $97 billion worldwide. From a prediction a year earlier of 82 billion. So it’s $15 billion higher than predicted, which is great news. We believe that the difference in the prediction and the results is that the vacation rental market is becoming more accepted worldwide. And, of course, governments worldwide are also catching up- so they’re creating better regulation, allowing for more people to come into the market. The biggest opportunity is that in the next four to five years, the vacation rental market is set to double. This creates a tremendous opportunity for everyone who wants to come in now.
By 2027, the market will be roughly around $200 billion. So it’s going to be double the size it is today. And it’s already a huge market. This grows side by side with the travel market as well. The travel market grew exponentially from 2014 to 2019. Until the pandemic hit in early 2020, every travel player in the industry was having the best start to the year in 2020 and then the pandemic hit and the market stopped, it completely stopped.
It’s been slowly catching up to where it was. However, high inflation shook the market a bit and it didn’t allow for a quick recovery as you would have in different conditions. So we predict that by 2024, the market will be bigger than it was in 2019.
It hasn’t been the case in 2021 and 2022. It is not going to be the case in 2023, the market is going to be adjusting and by 2024, the market will already be bigger than it was in 2019. This is going to mean that the exponential growth will start again and this will allow the vacation rental market to double in size by 2027.
E-Crypto News:
What are the investment options currently available? Please, can you provide details?
We do one investment at a time, we always have only one investment at a time. And when we open the investment, we mint the NFTs. Everyone who wants to join mints the NFTs and invests in the property. And we put the property on the market. And once this property is in the market, then we go to the next property in our pipeline, so it’s always one at a time.
The next investment that we’re going to have opened for minting is in the south of Portugal, as I was telling you before, it’s an area that’s been in huge demand. We see players like Davidson Kempner or Arrow Global, who are some of the biggest hedge funds in the world, investing in properties in this area. And even travel-wise for the vacation rental market, it’s been it’s the top market for UK visitors, and it’s the fastest-growing market for US and Brazil visitors. So it’s a huge opportunity that’s going to have a great return.
E-Crypto News:
What is the backstory behind YourWayWay?
The backstory behind YourWayWay is a great story. We believe that crypto is the future. So we wanted to bring our investments to crypto because we believe that we will be historically correct in doing so. After long considerations and investigations, we realized that the best way to do so would be through NF Ts through tokenizing real-world assets. We believe that NFTs are the best way to do so. And this will bring profitable real estate investment into crypto. And this is what we want to do.
This is our vision. Because in the future, once crypto hits mass adoption, NFTS will be as common in the world as the $1 bill. We believe that your birth certificate will be an NFT. We believe house deeds will be minted as NFTs. We believe that every transaction you make will be an NFT.
We are getting a step ahead in the game, and we are already tokenizing real-world assets into NF Ts to allow people to invest.
E-Crypto News:
Please, can you explain the impact of real estate cryptocurrency investments on calming the stormy markets?
Real estate crypto investments bring real-world assets to crypto. And this is the way to calm the markets. I mean, if you look at TradeFi as opposed to crypto, it’s been crazy.
This week, we’ve all seen what’s going on with Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, and Credit Suisse today and the stocks of all major banks are collapsing.
And the ECB is meeting as we speak. So TradeFi is showing us that crypto is the way forward and to bring more trust into crypto, and this calms the markets. The way to do so is to have some real assets. Backing this crypto in real estate is the best way to do it.
So yes. We believe that crypto real estate will help calm the markets.
E-Crypto News:
What are YourWayWay’s investment exit options?
There’s an obvious exit option. Every NFT that is minted to invest in a property that can be bought back by YourWayWay after two years. So you make your investment say you have 0.5 ETH to invest, you mint your NFT and after you yield your 0.5 ETH for two years for a 12.5% APY, we will buy you back your NFT for your 0.5 ETH. So you have your ETH plus your yield if you want to have an exit out of the investment. If you don’t want to have an exit and if you want to keep on investing in this property, your crypto will keep on yielding, and you will be receiving your 12.5% APY returns.
But if you want an exit, there’s a clear exit on the two years mark, where we can buy your NFTs back from you. If you want to stay after the first two years, at the end of every year, if you want to sell back your NFT, we’ll be happy to buy it back from you. And you will have all your crypto back.
E-Crypto News:
Are there any specific locations you guys have in mind?
Yes, we have a lot of locations in the pipeline. When we look into possible locations for investments, there are always two criteria that have to be met.
One is high property value and the other is travel demand. We need to understand that the property value is going to rise and the travel demand is gonna be high as well.
Only when these two criteria are met, then we invest in a specific location. And, for the past few years, we’ve been focusing on Southern Europe, but we always have a global scope. And there are a lot of interesting destinations that are coming along that are strong for vacation rental demand but are not as strong yet for property value.
But as soon as they start to mature and property value starts to increase, then it’s going to be the perfect time for us to go in and start investing as well.
E-Crypto News
How exactly did you get into blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies?
Well, the founders that started YourWayWay are all crypto lovers. I was the last one to commit to crypto, maybe four years ago. So I was I started into crypto at a high in a very bullish market. Then crypto winter came along and gave me a little taste of reality. We believe that crypto is the future. And especially looking at how TradeFi has been behaving this week. We believe that we are right, and crypto is the only way forward. This is why we are so so so invested in this technology. It’s a very clear vision for us that crypto will come to mass adoption. And when this happens, we will be ahead in the game already.
E-Crypto News:
Why did you choose NFTs as an investment representation form?
Well, we chose NF T’s because we believed that it was the most transparent way to tokenize different projects individually. If we just had a YourWayWay token, this would mean that whoever had the tokens was involved in every investment.
We want to decentralize each investment. And the way to do this is through NFTs. This is why we chose this option. So you know that your NFT grants you fractional ownership of a particular property. And if you want to invest in multiple, properties, you can buy NFTs for each property.
But each NFT is connected to a particular property. We don’t want to operate exactly like a hedge fund. We want you to have a word and to have a say, in the way the properties that you invested in are managed. But you don’t get to have a say on the properties that you didn’t invest in, because that wouldn’t be fair for the people who did. And that’s why we chose NFTs. So we know that each token is related to one specific property.
E-Crypto News:
Do you have any presale or promotional activities that are either planned or currently ongoing? Please, can you tell us about them?
Sure. We are just focused on creating a community. Our biggest goal is to create a community that will understand how YourWayWay works. What the vision of YourWayWway is. Get involved. Even if you don’t invest, get involved and share some knowledge with us if you’re interested and you have the knowledge to share on particular issues. And so we’ve been focusing on creating our community to help YourWayWay grow.
E-Crypto News:
Why set the minimum investment at 0.5 ETH?
We set the minimum investment at 0.5 ETH because we believe it’s a small enough amount that allows anyone interested in investing to buy an NFT, a property NFT. We considered higher amounts, but we feared that this would drive smaller investors away.
Regardless of how much crypto you have, we are trying a new thing. We are bringing real-world assets into crypto. And so we want to allow everyone to be able to invest, knowing that this is a secure investment, but at the same time worry-free that they are putting all their life savings because properties are an expensive investment.
This is exactly the mindset that we want to change. We want to make sure that everyone invests in real estate like they never did before.
E-Crypto News:
How will real estate investments via cryptocurrency tokens help improve adoption?
We believe that crypto adoption in general will improve gradually, in the next few years. We know that we are at the bottom of a liquidity crisis. We know that inflation has created a downturn for investments worldwide in every area, but we also see that inflation is slowing down. These interest rate increases will slow down and will eventually start reducing. This means that liquidity will flow back into the market. And when liquidity flows back, there’s more money coming into crypto.
Tokens will be making the news again with new all-time highs. By then governments will have adjusted and will have created some regulations that are still needed for mass adoption.
And so as adoption increases the more opportunities we’ll have, the more adoption we will also have. It’s very clear that if you bring real-world assets into crypto, it will be a much more appealing gateway for people who have been a bit skeptical until now to come into crypto as well.
E-Crypto News:
Are we on our way to creating alternatives that will help lift the crypto space? What are your thoughts about this?
Absolutely. I think so. I mean, we are creating new opportunities for people to come into crypto every day. We understand that the market is not great now. We believe that we’re still in a bear market. And the bear market is probably going to last for a couple of more months.
I believe that by the end of the second quarter, things will have started to turn around. As things turn around, and we go into a bull market again, the crypto market will start growing exponentially as it did a couple of years ago. And when this happens, the adoption of crypto is going to keep on rising.
The more opportunities we create in crypto, the more people will invest in crypto. Especially the way that they have seen investments in the past if they see a similar way to that. Real estate has always been a safe investment, and if they have a way to invest in crypto backed by real estate, they will see that there’s another layer of security. So this will help lift the crypto space.
E-Crypto News:
Where do you see YourWayWay in the next decade?
Hopefully sooner than the next decade, we will see YourWayWay fully decentralized. Our vision is that in the near future, we can have a fully decentralized YourWayWay that does exactly what we are beginning to do now, which is to allow everyone to invest in real estate via crypto with fractionalized ownership.
This means that it will be completely autonomous. So people will come into YourWayWay, decide what properties they want to invest in, invest in that property market, that property, and each investment will be managed exclusively by the investors.
That’s the future: full decentralization.
That’s our vision.
Related:What is a NFT and Should You Invest in Them?
