Blok, the real estate tokenisation project. Interview with Pierre Soulette.

In this video (in French), we step away from mining for a moment to present a French blockchain project: Blok, which aims to make real estate investment accessible through tokenisation. We talk with Pierre Soulette, one of its two co-founders, to understand how the project works, what its two tokens are for and what its next steps were.

Video from 2022: the amounts, offers and milestones below are those announced at the time and may have changed since.

How Blok started

Pierre Soulette has been interested in blockchain for several years. According to him, the idea for Blok came about in 2020, in discussions with his partner: both were working in real estate at the time. The project's stated goal is to make it simple to invest in property, with cryptocurrency or with euros.

The principle: buying "blocks" from €50

Pierre Soulette describes how it is meant to work:

• A block represents a share of a real estate investment. It starts at €50 and can be paid for in cryptocurrency or by bank card;
• Interest paid every week, straight into the investor's wallet;
• Instant resale on a secondary marketplace;
• Eventually, use as collateral: blocks could be pledged on DeFi protocols to obtain a loan of about 50 to 60% of their value.

A security token backed by a property

Pierre Soulette points out that a block is not just an NFT: it is a security token, a kind of share in a specific property which, according to him, is recognised in the eyes of the law.

In the structure presented, each property is held by an SPV (a French securitisation fund, or fonds commun de créances). Tenants pay their rent to this SPV, which issues the blocks on the blockchain, and each investor receives a return based on the number of blocks they hold. We stress that you do not need to know anything about cryptocurrency: you can invest in euros, receive blocks and simply focus on the return.

BKT, the platform's utility token

Alongside the block, Blok plans a second token, BKT, a utility token. According to Pierre Soulette, it is meant to provide several benefits on the platform:

• priority access to invest in new properties;
• another way to buy blocks;
• airdrops;
• holiday weeks.

BKT was to be offered in an ICO in three rounds, covering 7 million BKT out of a total supply of 100 million.

Access NFTs and the roadmap

We then present the two types of NFT the project planned for taking part in the ICO:

• Blok Gold (950 units): a 3% discount on the first block bought in each property;
• Blok Gold VIP: a 10% discount on the first block bought in each property, and its holders share 50% of the royalties.

At the time of our interview, a live question-and-answer session (AMA) had taken place in the second quarter of 2022 and the private sale was under way, with tickets still available. The sale of the first NFTs, giving access to BKT tokens in the three-round ICO, was announced for the third quarter of 2022. Next would come the purchase of the first properties, the scaling-up of the platform and, eventually, DeFi uses for BKT such as staking and farming.

And where does mining fit in?

We ask Pierre Soulette whether he knows about cryptocurrency mining. He explains that Blok is considering, if possible, building mining into some of its property development projects, for example to heat homes or produce hot water by recovering the energy given off by the machines.

Recovering the heat from mining machines is a topic we know well: read our article "I heat my house with my rigs" and discover our home miners. For another interview, see our discussion with Florent Gabriel of Blobb.io about Bitcoin mining, and find all our videos on the tutorials page.

This article summarises the content of the video and does not constitute investment advice.