Blockchain: From buzzword to viable business, breaking down one of real estate’s hottest topics

The dictionary definition of blockchain is “a digital ledger in which transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency are recorded chronologically and publicly.” Clear enough, right? Well, not exactly. In front of a packed room on the second day of MIT’s World Real Estate Forum the question was posed: how many people have heard of blockchain? Nearly every hand in the room was raised, a difference from what was observed just a mere 2 years ago. But, when the question was posed about who really understood blockchain, less than half of the room raised their hands.

As Avi Spielman, an alumni of MIT’s Master’s in Real Estate Development (MSRED) program who wrote his thesis on the topic further explained, “it’s a digital ledger where all copies can sync among the parties involved. Each update forms a block of information which attaches to previous blocks of information, thus creating a ‘block chain’.” If you want to hear more about what Avi has to say, he attempted to demystify the concept even further in a recent Forbes article.