Tokenization: The Future of Ownership | Solomon Amaechi @Web3LagosCon

My name is Solomon Okafo. Um I'm the CEO of Kubonia Technologies. Um founder and CEO. And um today I'm going to give a talk on tokenization as the future of ownership. We are talking about tokenization right.

And um I wanted to just get a you know sense of you know people in the audience if you understand what tokens are like primarily what are tokens like does anybody just probably maybe like have an idea of how they would explain tokens you know any takers. Okay. Um, how many of you here uh have MTN? Like your primary line is MTN? Just a show of hands.

Okay. How many of you are your primary airlines? Um, so do you use glow? Glow. I think there's one they call what's the name now?

Um, n mobile. Is it still functional? Like who use NO? Okay. So, so what are tokens at the at the at the at their core, right?

Um, even before tokens became very popular in crypto, tokens existed in networking, right? So, tokens basically give you access rights to participate in a network, right? So, for example, why I asked what network you used was because I was trying to make reference to a practical um example of how tokens work. So there is MTN for example when you go out and buy an MTN air time or you buy recharge card of something and you load into your MTN sim can you use the air time to can you send the end time from MTN to glow and use it to call somebody no you can't do that right so MTN air time give you access right to work within the MTN space so within the MTN network. So you can buy air times, you can buy data, you can do whatever MTN offers you services to do on the MTN network easily.

Same applies to glow, same applies to N mobile, air and whatever network you have on very good example for that is air mouse, right? for air mouse for example when you have air mouse with um airpace for example you can't go and use it with um Eric except they belong to sort of like a what do they call them now they have this um consortium where you know airlines now have this mouse program and then that is how you could use it so see I am it I just I like practicals I don't I don't really have a lot of um so I'm just trying to give a very practical example of how tokens would work in real life then what is tokenization you know and why does it matter that's the next question so tokenization again like I said a lot of these terminologies are used in crypto today but they didn't emanate from crypto a lot of these thing existed in networking in computer science long before crypto came along or you know the modern idea of what crypto represents so tokenization today is the representation of real world assets on chain that typically means. But why does tokenization make sense and what can be tokenized? So today you can tokenize assets but aside from tokenizing assets you can tokenize ownership as well. One of the things I find really fascinating about tokenization is the idea of the fractionalization of everything.

Literally you could fractionize anything into tokens if you know it's properly represented um you know in terms of like in real life if it has the right um regulatory and um legal covering you can represent it on chain and make it available anywhere. So key market that tokenization will revolutionize. So these are some of the based on my own personal analysis that I think that tokenization will have a lot of impact on. So first of them is capital markets. So when we talk about the capital markets, we're talking about equities, we talk about bonds, shares, commodities and all that stuff, right?

So what happens when you tokenize capital market and make them accessible everywhere? So it quite some week ago, I think like about maybe like four or five weeks ago, there was this news we had where they said like Niger stock exchange was the best performing in the world, right? second only to Korea or I think so South Korea or something. So why was that news interesting to me? I was like in my mind I was like h so if equities from Nigeria were on chain if Dangot cement was on chain like you could buy Dangot cement on chain you could buy Dangot sugar on chain you could buy MTN on chain what would that have meant for the market at that moment we would have seen some explosive growth some explosive participation from people from around the world trying to tap into that you know opportunity that was presented through that news then we have private credit trade finance So these are also like very massive places where there are opportunities right but again the idea of tokenizing this this this private credit making it accessible to just anyone to participate in it you know I'm also trying to watch my time so real estate is also very easy if anybody has tried to sell land before you know or sell properties you already know the problem there right it's easy to say oh come and buy a land here or come and buy a property Uh but when it's time to sell it, you should realize how hard it is.

I know there's a startup called Kebo that is working in this intersection, but they are working from a fractionalization perspective. I don't think they're entirely on chain, but again, we think there is a massive opportunity for real estate to come on chain. Alternative assets uh assets like commodities, copper, gold, all that stuff could come on chain as well. I think gold is already on chain. I think TATA today has Teta gold which is currently on chain.

Why does it matter for emerging market? There's a quote I wanted to read. Um so there this book I read a long time ago. It's called the mystery of capital by Hernando Dutto. Right.

So the theory of the book was like a lot of people in emerging market are in poverty not because they do not have the access to to tap into capital but because they do not have the infrastructure and the system that will allow them to maximize that. So let me read that quote very interesting. So it says here, most of the poor already possess the assets they need to make a success of capitalism, but they hold the resources in defective forms, houses built on land whose ownership is not adequately documented, unincorporated business with undeclared assets, industries located where finances and investors cannot see them because the rights to this position are not adequate. But like the idea I'm going to is emerging market like Nigeria present an enormous opportunity here for tokenization and bringing these things on chain. So one of the reasons is right I mean reasons one of the reasons is we have enos of asset.

So I'm going to give a practical example for this, right? Um you see there's this woman in your locality that sells food, right? She has these small skills. She sells, you know, rice plus beans and plus small spaghetti and you add stew, you know, I have a good day, right? So but this woman struggles because every month she has to figure out capital to meet her needs every single month.

So what happens if we could say see let's call her yaser. I think that's the easiest that comes to mind. So if you say Yabas for example sells that sells food right I will say Yaser has a steady cash flow of say 50,000 NRA per month we are almost certain that next month Yas will say 50,000 NRA what if you could tokenize her future revenue and make that accessible to just anyone on chain who is interested in investing in that business so that you can provide the immediate capital she needs and then in the future you can take an a percentage of her earnings This is what we talking about here when we talk about enormous pools of unutilized assets that are just sitting there. Houses, people who have houses that will tell you that they don't even know what to do because they cannot sell. The prices are not good.

And then so we have um the opportunity to leacy infrastructure like I mentioned you know um one of the things that had made that very remarkable about the times we live in as Africans is because um we are lerogging everything. You know, we really we frogged and and went straight to mobile telephon, right? We are we were born in the age of internet. A lot of people in this room probably never knew how landline worked, right? You don't know how you roll it in and then roll it back again or you never went to start at night to wait for your uncle to call you around 8:00 p.

m., right? You did. [laughter] Okay. So, fantastic.

A few people understand. So but like what we are saying is we leapfrog the whole process and went straight to mobile telephon making mobile phones accessible to everybody. Everyone is able to call their uncle brow the internet so easily. So we are going to leap frog all those process again when it comes to the tokenizing assets and ownership the way it works today. Imagine if Lego state government that keeps demolition everybody's okay I'm not saying that.

So for example right but if instead of government demolition things right if when you bought a property you had committed that property to the onchain right and then your title deals were on chain easily readable you know um um transparent accountable anyone can just go there to say it right if we had that kind of system when somebody cannot just come and say oh they want to demolish your property or you having so issue of land title issues and all so I'm just saying there's a lot of opportunity there as well. we have greater access to capital constraint like I mentioned you can you can take people's future in income and tokenize it and then you give them immediate value and and like that ex that emerging market populations are already internet native that's practically very self-explanatory right a lot of people today um we all use mobile phones we all are connected to the internet we are smarter than we have ever been so basically our market are ready to adopt this technology ies and I think that's where we are going to what I'm just what I've just tried to argue or just you know chat about here is that tokenization is very important I know a lot of us this might still seem like some of this thing might look abstract but like tokenization represent a real opportunity for us as Africans for us as Nigerians to really you know take hold of our future right I I believe some of the things that we need to make this possible. We need to build custodial services. We need to build um secretization services. We need to build onchain wallet which are primarily able to house um all manner of ownership um um um assets because again like I mentioned in the future your house will be a token that you hold in your wallet on your phone.

Your equities in all your businesses will be a unit that you can hold as inside your wallet inside your phone. your what you know your investment maybe all those Karee and bosses you have if you're able to tokenize them evaluate them tokenize them they you have those things represented as just maybe soban tokens or whatever on your um as tokens in your wallet and that is how you'll be carrying around all your assets and that for me is the real future that I'm looking forward to thank you everyone for for sitting through