SDAX CEO sees Blockchain democratization of real estate

Digital platforms can reduce the costs associated with real estate investment while improving transparency, according to former JP Morgan banker Raymond Poh in an interview in Singapore today.

Poh, who now serves as CEO of blockchain-powered SDAX, told the audience at the Mingtiandi Singapore Focus Forum 2022 that the startup allows fund managers and other capital market firms to bring all types of real assets to a larger pool of investors.

Having taken the helm of the ESR-backed platform more than a year ago, Poh noted that the total value of real assets in the global private market space stands at US$520 trillion, as opposed to about US$100 trillion in the public markets, with SDAX as target. to use its technology infrastructure to bring the transparency of exchanges to the private real estate universe.

“The problem statement that we’re trying to solve is to get a lot of these private market funds to a broader base of investors,” Poh said.

Powered by Blockchain

Based in Singapore and regulated by the city-state’s central banking authority, SDAX is a digital asset exchange for the tokenization and trading of asset-backed digital securities. The platform connects institutions and accredited investors to assets and provides access to valuable, hard-to-trade assets, using the blockchain to streamline and secure transactions.

Raymond Poh, Managing Director, SDAX CEO Raymond Poh

“With the latest smart contract technology on the blockchain, we hope to automate many of these processes, making it more accessible, cheaper and more transparent when it comes to information about the specific agreement,” said Poh. “It will make it much easier for investors to come in, find out more about the asset and then be able to decide how much money they want to put into a single investment.”

In the interview, the one-time GE engineer laid out a vision of fintech as a continuum stretching back to the first transatlantic cable in the 1860s (fintech 1.0), on to mainframe computing and the first ATMs in the 1960s (fintech 2.0) and to cryptocurrency on the blockchain today (fintech 3.0).

“I see ourselves in this convergence as fintech 3.5,” Poh said. “We use the technology available through blockchain and smart contracts, and packaging that along with securities that have been around for 50 years.”

Commitment to ESG

Formed from the merger of Digiassets Exchange Singapore and Minterest Holdings, SDAX counts ESR among its shareholders after the Warburg Pincus-backed industrial specialist took over ARA Asset Management earlier this year. ARA and its co-founder, John Lim, previously held a majority stake in Minterest.

ESR recently designated SDAX as the only digital asset platform to give smaller investors access to the fund manager’s very first US$1.5 billion pan-Asia data center vehicle, as announced by Poh on MTD TV last month.

The partnership with ESR is a natural fit for SDAX, which shares the Hong Kong-listed group’s commitment to environmental, social and governance principles.

“Either you are in ESG or your assets will be discounted in the future,” Poh said on Tuesday. “Or the cost of doing business is going to skyrocket. As one of our strategic investors has told me, they will stop doing business with their non-ESG compliant partners simply because the cost of doing business due to carbon taxes is going to be too expensive.”