How Tokenization is Transforming Liquidity and Ownership in Commercial Real Estate

Introduction to Tokenization in Real Estate

Drew: Welcome back to the Peak Property Performance Podcast. It's me, your host, Drew Hall, and with me as always, hosting Bill Douglas. Welcome, Bill.

Bill: Hey, Drew. Glad to be back.

Drew: Yeah. Glad to be back. So today, let me tell you what our theme is first. Our theme today is going to be the other side or another side of digital within commercial real estate with tokenization as the next liquidity engine and what CRE owners must do today to be ready. So Bill, give us an intro of who we've got with us today.

Bill: All right. George, welcome to the show. I'm going to read your intro and I didn't cut it short because I think it adds a lot to your credibility.

George Kushner: Thank you very much.

Bill: George is a seasoned institutional finance executive and the founder of a platform dedicated to the next major evolution in commercial real estate, and that is tokenization of real world assets. I'm personally fascinated with it outside of commercial real estate, but to see it come in commercial real estate got me excited when you wanted to be on the show. So back to George. Across a Wall Street career spanning global markets and large scale institutional transactions, George developed a front row view of how capital actually moves and why a commercial real estate liquidity has been locked behind legacy structures. After recognizing the transformative potential of blockchain and distributed ledger technology, George shifted his focus to the emerging digital asset economy. His mission is now to help property owners understand how tokenization can unlock liquidity, democratize access to CRE investment and redefine how assets are capitalized and traded. He joins us today to break this down without hype and common words, right? We're going to have a conversation. And joins us to explain why every CRE owner, especially in the mid market should begin preparing for this shift now, even if the full transformation is still three to five years away. So again, George, welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you.

George Kushner: Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate the invite and offer and Bill and Drew can't wait to get into it.

Drew: Fantastic. All right. Well, I like that part there at the end of the intro about breaking it down without hype. I mean, it obviously applies to all of us. So we've got the hypometer fired up, right? It alerts once it gets to a certain level. All right. So George, you said that today when an owner needs liquidity, the options are pretty binary. They either sell the whole asset or refinance. But how does tokenization change all that?

Understanding Tokenization and Its Benefits

George Kushner: And this is to me the most exciting part about it because not only does it help the GP, it's going to help the LPs as well. And so it's very, very rare that you find anything in finance where it kind of balances the world and you have this equanimity or equality. If you look at commercial real estate today, to your point, there are really mainly two forms of liquidity, sell the property outright, or if there's equity still in it, you can recapitalize, refinance the company. What tokenization does, it not only unlocks that liquidity, it fractionalizes. So I'm going to give you an example right now. And we can take a multifamily complex, let's say in Atlanta, Georgia, where I live. And let's say that property is worth, I don't know, 10, 15, $20 million, something like that. You can take that property and put it on chain. Now, what that means is no, we're not actually physically taking it and putting on a physical blockchain, it's just tokenizing this. So we're taking the title from whoever has it, a trusted custodian, it's still remain there, but we're going to take this property and put it on chain by fractionalizing assets. So we'll take this $20 million property, we'll create in theory to keep the math simple, $21 million coins. And now the owner of said property, he or she can carve out whatever amount of that $20 million they need liquidity on. If they only need $5 million, they can sell $5 million of that property. And again, under that example, we're presuming that the property is owned outright. But with that being said, they could carve out whatever equity is in that project and tokenize that. And what it does is it creates these tokens and the tokens will be traded on marketplaces. And so think about this, if you're a real estate developer today, typically for price discovery, you're looking at comps. That's what you're trying to figure out. What's so close to me, where's St. Collins, so forth and so on. There's still going to be that, but yet with tokenization, you have real-time real-world access to 24-7, 365 information and data. And as the owner of these coins, as the owner of these tokens, you can go and sell them and move them around. I always like to pick on the Empire State Building. Let's just say for kicks and giggles, the Empire State Buildings were again, a billion dollars. We're going to offer $1 billion, coins, tokens, put it on the blockchain, have a trusted custodian that's going to safekeep the title, if you will. And then let's just say the owner only needs 50 million. He's going to sell floors 35 through 56 or what have you. So now you have men and women around the world that for $10 can go and start buying fractionalization in these tokens. The flip side of that as a developer, let's face it, because I've been around this world for a while, we typically tend to regurgitate and go back to the same investor pool over and over and over, whether it's angels, high net worth syndicates, whether it's family offices, whether it's RIA, all the different groups that we all know that you typically try and go to, to tap capital, obviously banks, but for the equity side we're talking about. Well, now think about it. You have 8 billion people on planet earth that you now can tap to get this equity and to create liquidity. That's the game changer.

Drew: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Well, say a little bit more about that part. So, I mean, in your previous example, the most recent one right there, I think you were talking about Empire State of the smaller valued coin, $5 or $10 or whatever. How does that level of democratization unlock differing opportunities for, whether it's the owner themselves or the market that they're in? I can imagine it just really shifts things on its head.

George Kushner: It does. I mean, I think for the owner, as far as their liquidity sources, today they have a relatively finite amount of capital for liquidity. And if you think about this, the D word, which I do love, the democratization of tokenizing real world assets, you now have people globally. If you're a developer in the Southeast, you're typically concentrating on maybe Southeast investors. If you're in the Northeast or wherever part of the country or world you're in, where tokenization, again, it breaks down the barriers globally and you don't have to rely on institutional capitalization. You can go to retail, mom and pop investors. Like I said, they could invest in $10. Some will invest in 100,000, 50,000, just depends on the project. But what it does to the landscape of potential investors for these projects, for these deals, it's truly untapped and unparalleled because it's a global, global reach.

Pricing and Volatility in Tokenized Assets

Bill: Well, George, let me interject and ask how it's priced. I mean, if I buy a token, I'm not the seller. Obviously, I'm a buyer and I buy it for $10. How do I know it's not going to just go crazy like some of these other, like Bitcoin, for instance, or some of the other old coins? How do I know it's not going to go down 70% to go back up 300% and have those wild swings? How is it priced based on what the property does and how the property is performing?

George Kushner: Great question. Because if you're saying we're based on comps, do comps go away or comps drive the price? So I think a little bit of all, but let's address the volatility for a minute. The biggest difference between what we're talking about, okay, tokenization of real world assets. You now have real world assets that are behind it. And a lot of these assets generate cash flow and produce yield. That's a big difference. I'm not picking on Bitcoin. I love Bitcoin. I think it's great. But one of the big knots on Bitcoin is it doesn't produce any cash flow. It doesn't generate any yield. And so you see these massive swings in volatility because Bill thinks Bitcoin's worth a hundred thousand. I think it's worth 50,000, so forth and so on. That's the quick example. But when you start tokenizing real world assets and looking at commercial real estate, so going back to that project, let's just do a smaller project, 25 million. You're going to issue one $25 million coins. So you, Bill, as the owner of that coin project, that should have very, very little to do whether Bitcoin goes to a million or goes to 10,000. It's going to be tethered or tied to that real world asset project. Now, the good news is if real estate, the economy, things are going up in general, the price of that coin should be going up. But conversely, just like all other assets, you don't get your cake and eat it too. If real estate's doing poorly and interest rates are starting to spike, go back up and the economy's starting to sag, you're going to see price action there too. The difference is-

Bill: But we saw price action affect the office market since the pandemic. So that had nothing to do with coins. We've seen buildings trade $0.10 on a dollar in the office market and major NFL cities in the past year and swing back up to $0.50 on a dollar. So the volatility, we accept that. How do I know I'm not going to be hurt just because of the cryptocurrency tidal waves or tsunamis that draws all the way back and all of a sudden comes in?

George Kushner: Because the reality is there's really no correlation to it. It's comparing apples and kumquats. So Bill owns the multifamily coin in Tampa, Florida of Project X. And the price of that and the volatility of that coin should be in and around what's going on in multifamily, in and around Tampa, and then more broadly in the macro economy and macro real estate market of what's going on. So again, I think if Bitcoin goes hyperbolic or tanks, that should have very, very little effect on that.

Bill: But you're saying that the value of the coin is largely driven by the value of the asset providing the-

George Kushner: That's exactly right.

Drew: Okay. So we talk a lot on the show about a status quo bias and a fear of change, especially fear of technology and commercial real estate. I mean, we all know it's there, not judging, just dealing with it because change management's a big thing. So that is why I wanted to ask that because there's a huge fear factor or there's the assumption that tokenization means Bitcoin and Bitcoin means risk and that we're risk averse as it should be. It's a commercial real estate asset. So yeah. Let me ask you a question about that idea. Tokenization itself, it sounds like a newly minted term.

Drew: But not really, right? I mean, we use tokenization in so many other avenues. And I'm just curious, is there any kind of correlation between trading of a publicly traded company stocks in a publicly traded company? I mean, is there any correlation at all to something like that, something that people are more traditionally familiar with?

George Kushner: They do. There are several equities that are out there already that have tokenized offerings. Those are more of tokenized trackers as opposed to being real equity. But they've already talked about, I mean, you're now talking about some of the largest asset managers on Wall Street. I used to speak at, I used to work at BlackRock. When I was there, you couldn't even use the T word or Bitcoin. They were just, you know, it was totally against it. But now they're starting to see the dawning of the light. And they're talking about tokenizing, Drew, stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies. Why? Because of the liquidity. Why? Because we're in 2025, not 1825. You will now have price discovery 24-7, 365. And not like it's 1825 when the equity markets open from 9:30 in the morning to four o'clock.

George Kushner: So look there, I think it all boils down to the E word, which is education. Because the reality is I did a lot in my career in alternative investments. So private equity, private equity, real estate, hedge funds, and the misnomers, the misconceptions about the space, nine tenths out of my job was to come in and try and break these things down and explain the virtues and attributes of these things. Again, tokenization, just like everything else, it's not the panacea, but it's got some really, really strong characteristics that not only help the GPs, it actually is beneficial and helpful to the LPs as well.

Digital Infrastructure and Prerequisites for Tokenization

Bill: Let's shift a little bit and talk about what owners got to have in place first. We talk constantly on the show about digital infrastructure and data ownership. So what digital prerequisites must exist in a property, in a company, in a portfolio before an asset can be responsibly tokenized?

George Kushner: The first thing is with tokenization is making sure that the GP understands it and buys into it and gets it. And I think that once he or she does that, we then talk about and look at title and who actually owns the property and where that title sits. Because ultimately title will not change hands per se, just in tokenization, as long as the cap stack is the same. So the equity holders and the debt holders, they say the same. But what we're talking about is a couple of things. And I work with a project that is actually doing these things right now. And you can do one of two things. You can actually tokenize the project directly. And so going back to what we said, the project would sit on the blockchain, which is nothing more than a ledger that tracks who owns what, who keeps what. And then clearly you have a trusted custodian that's going to be keeping that title. And then you have these coins that are trading. So I think it really gets down to, because the tech side of this, that's the easiest part of it by far and away.

Drew: Well, let's talk about how much of an advantage it is, because not that I've been a GP in a commercial real estate portfolio before, but I've been the managing partner in LLCs and C-Corps where changing shareholders is very difficult. So if somebody could just trade a token and be out of your property, that has to be a big advantage to your cap table and to your overhead, to everything it takes to actually change a stakeholder, a shareholder, whatever the word is, member in an LLC, that has to be a big advantage.

George Kushner: And again, I should have walked back GP and just put in sponsor, because again, it doesn't matter what the structure of the entity is, if you're a real estate developer, sponsor, what have you. But you just hit the nail on the head. That's the whole thing. Well, from the investment standpoint, there is a GP. That's their title. They're the ones that are in charge. The LP, they're the ones that are writing the checks and playing along. So to your point with keeping track of all these things, how many shares does Bill have? How many shares does Drew have? How many shares does George have? And by the way, you know how liquid our shares are until they sell the property or maybe spin out. So if you put that on chain and me and the three of us own these things, then that's super easy. Because again, all the blockchain is, people, and this is very simple to understand, take an Excel spreadsheet and throw it up in the sky. That's the blockchain at a very, very, very high level. And most people have worked on Excel, so they kind of understand that. So if you can track everything on this blockchain, which is a fancy word ledger, then you've got it all right there. And then Bill has his coins. I had Drew has his, I have mine. And again, if we want to trade these, sell these, buy more, whatever, it's that available. There's that functionality.

Bill: Well, are commercial real estate owners anywhere close to the baseline of data and digitization or throwing your spreadsheet up in the sky like you just said? Are there anywhere close to that required for tokenization or is this going to be a major shift for them?

George Kushner: They are. I think that we're starting to see the proverbial toe being dipped in the water. You saw the, I think it was the fall, he's getting confused. I think it was the four seasons or St. Regis in Aspen, Colorado, that the equity in that property was tokenized. And this has been four or five years ago, at least. Yeah, I've seen Brownstones in Manhattan tokenized. I've seen, I can't remember exactly what the property was. Austin, Texas has tokenized some real estate. So every single day, we're starting to see this thing pick up a little bit of speed. I can tell you that at least in the United States, a lot of investors and sponsors, they didn't want to get into this world until the US provided regulatory clarity. And I'm not sure how much of your listeners are paying attention to it, but the good news is the US passed something in July of this year called the Genius Act. And that determines how stable coins, so stable coins, think of them as like a digital representation of a dollar. And then they're halfway through something called the Clarity Bill. And the Clarity Bill is going to determine the SEC is going to govern for the most part security coins and the CFTC, the Commodity Future Trading Commission, is going to be governing utility coins. So this should all be passed and cleared, we're hoping, in the first quarter of 2026. And then you're going to start to see, I think, a pretty mass influx of institutional adoption in real world asset tokenization, commercial real estate, because it is the largest asset class on the planet. It's going to change the world. It's absolutely going to change the world, in my humble opinion.

Drew: Well, when you get that structure behind it, the two that you just talked about, then banks are going to discount it and banks are going to call a note, for instance, if you start to do that with your equity. They're going to play along and be encouraged by it. So there's not just access to capital, it's access to... I mean, think about how the blockchain can make it easier to trade a building. You're not going to... I mean, I could see title agencies going away because the blockchain will take it right back to the core title.

George Kushner: So you hit the nail on the head. And again, title insurance companies, for instance, they're going to be hurting. And not only that, the transparency of the blockchain. In certain parts of the country, we're still going down to the county courthouse to pull deeds to find out who owns things. And again, that was awesome and great in 1825. But in 2025, it absolutely is insane that we're doing this. And on the blockchain, you can go right to it. It's totally transparent. There's so many other attributes that are about it. And to your point, these title companies, if they're not already pivoting or shifting or trying to augment their business, it could be a long, long slog for them coming up.

Bill: Well, you've given us some hints about the signals that are flashing about this becoming more commonplace. You mentioned Aspen and Austin, Texas. And the legislation that you mentioned as well. What do you think the pace will look like over the coming years, in the next three to five years? How much acceleration do you think there will be in this?

Web 3.0 and Its Impact on Real Estate

George Kushner: I think it's going to pick up pretty quickly. And I think everybody loves to look at Web 3, which is what this world is considered, being very, very similar to the dawning of the internet. The internet kind of had a slow, slow adoption. And then all of a sudden, you just saw this kind of massive spike up. I feel that, and after speaking with a lot of investors globally, especially on the institutional sideline, as we just spoke about, this regulatory ambiguity in the US was holding them back. I think that you now have major, major, major players in the space, from banks to asset managers all around the world, that have been now not so quietly beefing up their digital asset team, because they know that we are on the precipice. Right now, globally, it's about $475 trillion in assets, that's both in the public and private markets. Real estate, again, is the inter-bound gorilla in the space. McKinsey, I believe, came out with a report that said by the end of the decade, you're going to see many, many, many trillions of dollars that have been tokenized, and it's going to continue to escalate. I mean, today, you're talking about a marketplace of tokenized assets in totality of about $320 billion, but of that, only $300 billion are stable coins, and the rest is everything else. So, we're at the very, very, very tippy-tippy top of the iceberg. It's just going to be nicked, and I think, again, the catalyst is going to be the US providing this clarity. I think the second half of 2026 is going to be rather miraculous, and I think for the rest of this decade, we're just going to be astonished about how many projects are on the blockchain, how many projects are tokenized, how we can now invest in projects all around the world for, again, $10, $20, $100, what have you.

Drew: George, you mentioned something, and we talked about keeping the language normal, not hyped. You mentioned Web 3.0, and we get asked a lot about Web 3.0. Could you take it a second and explain exactly what that is? Not from a commercial real estate perspective, but just what do you mean by Web 3.0?

George Kushner: I think the best way to describe Web 3.0 is if we look at Web 1.0, that was just static images and dial-up. If your listeners are old enough to remember AOL, all that kind of dial-up thing, and you just looked at static images on the internet. Web 2.0 has been defined as where you're more interactive, so the social media components of Facebook, the Instagram, things like that. Then Web 3.0 takes it to the next level where the platforms no longer really control and own the content, but us, the users and owners of our own content, control it. That could be things like your personal data that's being sold all over the internet from Google and all these other fine folks at Facebook, Amazon, Apple, all these different companies. But now you will control, you will own it, and these products...

George Kushner: There's really no intermediary that all these things will be able to go on chain without having a government or intermediary that has to interfere. So that's really the difference between web one, web two, and web three. Tokenization fifth and web three. That's why you brought it up.

Drew: Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, to hear you break it down like that, web one, two, and three, it's funny because it makes me think like in those, in that context, web one feels like inform me. Like that was the purpose of web one. Inform me. Web two feels like influence me, whether I know it or not, influence me. And web three feels like empower me. I love that. Like those feel like really big transitions. So that just popped into my head when you're going through that.

Adoption and Misconceptions of Tokenization

Bill: What do you feel like in terms of adoption? Do you, institutional, mid-market, family offices, do you think everyone's going to be interested here and dipping their toe in?

George Kushner: I do. I do. Because it levels the playing field so much. And I think that you have, again, as we spoke a few minutes ago, I think from the investor side, for the reach and the depth and scope of who can invest in these projects from jurisdictions. Now, again, if the project is tokenized outright, that's a no-brainer. But once sponsors start creating a fund structure, so whether it's a 506 or 3C7 or 3C1 or however they're raising their fund, we still don't know. Is the government going to make sure that, oh, you have to have accredited investors or qualified purchasers or things like that? But whether you do or don't, it's still going to be in a tokenized version. It's just going to be relegated to those types of investors. But direct property investments, this should be wide open to everyone. And I think that, again, you're already starting to see some decent movement in the space. I speak to people on a daily basis all over the world that are kind of getting up to speed on this stuff. And I think it's one of these things I love to use this analogy because people seem to get globbed onto the tech. I just don't understand the tech. It doesn't make sense to me. I can't wrap my head around blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, I'm really about to hurt your feelings, but I'm going to hurt my feelings, too, because here's the reality. That's a horrible, horrible crutch if you're not involved in this world because of tech. Why do I say that? Well, we're speaking to each other on a computer. And if you put a gun to my head and said, hey, what are the networkings of this machine and how does this even work? And I'm speaking in real time. And by the way, everyone walks around with this glued to their head constantly. Can you tell me how that works? And by the way, when you meet people at a meeting, you typically drive there. Can you tell me, is it combustible or electric engine? So the reality is none of us know how anything in the world operates for the most part. OK, and why do we use it? Because it's broad and mass adopted. Same thing with the Internet back in the day. Again, I vividly remember there's a video going around the Internet right now. It was a few guys are old enough to appreciate this. Bill Gates was on David Letterman. This was in 1997. And David Letterman is like, so what do you do? So Bill Gates are talking about the Internet. He's like, yeah, good luck with that nerd. Like nobody's going to care. And I feel that's exactly where we are on the dawning of all this Web3 with tokenization, with stable coins, all these different things. We are right there. And I think the floodgates are going to be opening up fairly soon.

Drew: Well, this is a big one. But just maybe skim through as we think about this, this major shift, how it impacts valuation models, underwriting and transparency in the industry. Like what are some of the heavy hitters? And I realize this is this could probably be an episode in its own. But what about in that arena, like valuation models and underwriting and then the transparency itself? Where does this shift take that?

George Kushner: So I think there's certain components that still are a little bit of, you know, lick your thumb and feel the air, especially when you're forecasting interest rate changes and things like that. But I think from a valuation standpoint, because of the transparency of the blockchain and when all these other properties are on chain and people, men and women around the world, analysts doing the due diligence around the world can see that data in real time and not look at pro forma projections past. These are real life in real time what's going on. And more importantly, when you're developing a new project, you know, we spoke about comps a few minutes ago. Comps, I think, are very important. But when you have comps that are now tokenized real world assets of a project, pardon me, and that is trading 24-7, you're not looking at a quarterly P&L or half yearly P&L or what have you. That's going to pretty much change the world. And I think it's going to be better in some cases and maybe worse off in some cases when you go to the bank to try and get the debt financing of these deals, because they, too, will now have real world, lifetime transparency assets looking on the blockchain and seeing exactly where other comps, other assets are trading in this space. So I think from a valuation and modeling standpoint, it's actually going to enhance it. And I think that just the real time component and mechanism where you don't have to guess nearly as much as we do today, that's going to be a game changer.

Operational Efficiency and Blockchain

Bill: George, how much data on the blockchain is there? Is that just on the financial performance side? Or can you put more data because we are big on operational efficiency here at OpticWise and peak property performance, right? Can all of that data be up there, too? Not for anybody, but for shareholders? And then when it's traded, can that operational data or history of data or history of performance? Because all of those go to making the property more and more and more valuable. Can those be on the blockchain, too?

George Kushner: A hundred percent. Again, this spreadsheet in the sky, it can pretty much handle whatever you need it to handle. And I think with the price discovery and shareholders or token holders, it would be akin to going up into their brokerage account because they're going to have tradable markets. As I mentioned, I'm working with a company, Toyo, and they will have tradable real estate markets. And you can go click on Xcoin and you can see price history just like you could on Tesla stock or Microsoft stock or what have you. So all of that stuff in the operational efficiency, the back office, the record keeping, the data, all that stuff literally can go on chain.

Drew: Yeah, we're big on benchmarking operational performance for our clients. And once they, of course, are in the right realm of operational performance, meaning 90th percentile, that could be another advantage of pricing your coin up. You just drive it because you know that it's solid. It can withstand market fluctuations because you have control of your expenses. And again, in the final analysis, investors want to see as much data, as much info as they can when they perform their due diligence. And when you have these things that are in lifetime from the operational performance to the performance of the asset to all these different ingredients that excites them, they've never had this. And they will literally be able to log in into their own portal and see these things in live time, in live real time. Not yesterday, not four hours ago, like right this second.

Bill: That is an eye opening concept to me. That was an aha moment just two or three minutes ago. That's why I asked that question. Off script, I was like, oh, wait a second. Like everything we're doing could be public. Because we always advocate you make it part of diligence when you're buying or selling a building. The value of the data and the value of the digital infrastructure and commercial real estate property is largely ignored historically. Our position is it should be another asset on your balance sheet that generates more income. Those two assets should, both of them. So the fact that you could put it on chain if you tokenize and use it to drive the value more is just astounding to me.

George Kushner: I mean, again, as an operator, driving operational efficiency, expense management, things of this nature, they're going to enhance the value of that property. And there can be a lot of sloppiness in this space. And I get that. I think that when people, I like to sometimes speak about blockchain technology outside of the financial services world and real estate. And just to make it easy when people think about our personal records, your driver's license, your passport, your health records. Again, this is not 1825. You should own these. We should be empowered, as Drusso mentioned a few minutes ago. Think about supply chain. When one vendor said, hey, I sent that to you a week ago. You should have it. And then they're fumbling and stumbling, pretending not to know. Oh, really? Tell me the blockchain hash, which is like the transaction number. And I'm going to go check it out. So all these things, insurance, title, medicine, law, they're all eventually going to be going to the space. And by the way, the contracts for these properties, the contracts for the investors as general partners and limited partners. Again, I don't want to get too wonky. The lawyers are going to be disintermediated. They're gone. Why? Because we have something in Web3 called smart contracts. And just imagine legal contracts, but electronic versions that are maintained and judicial systems, really, if you will, embedded in the contracts. They're saying, hey, this partner said they were going to do this and they didn't. So that doesn't or they do. And then it works. And then things get split out. So that's going to change things in many, many ways as well.

Addressing Myths and Future Outlook

Drew: Well, I mean, we're getting a little bit euphoric. So let me shift not to be a Debbie Downer, but let's talk about some like misconceptions. What are the biggest myths or misunderstandings you run into when talking to commercial real estate owners about tokenization?

George Kushner: I think that I don't know if it's a myth. I think they just you brought that up a little while ago. They immediately correlate it with Bitcoin. And they said, I don't believe in that stuff. Or, you know, yeah, I even own a little bit of Bitcoin, but I just can't stand the volatility. I don't want my project to look anything like that because there's no way my investors could stomach that volatility. The majority of them don't really haven't really scratched the surface on the space. And again, I don't think they need a doctorate to understand what this is about. I think if they're explained at a very, very high level. The biggest really hurdle has been just getting developers receptivity to listening because most of them are just skeptical of it. Because, again, the first thing they think about when they hear it is Bitcoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin. And they might not have a good impression of that. So that kind of dilutes the whole narrative from going forward.

Bill: Well, Drew and I hear this a lot because we've been implementing technology and commercial real estate for over a decade. I mean, the company itself is two decades old. So and I've been with it for 10. What do you say to the skeptic who says this?

George Kushner: Five years early, call me later. Five years early, what was the last part of the statement? Five years early, call me later. Call me in five years. I don't want to sell FOMO, but they're waiting for mass adoption instead of getting ready for it now. What do you say to that? It's really predicated on temperament. And I think that when I was younger in my career, I was much more dogmatic and forceful and try and get people to see the light, if you will. I think at this stage, what is going to happen, if I'm right in my projections with the U.S. providing this regulatory clarity here early in 2026, they are going to start reading in the real estate scrubs, in the real estate books they get access to and online things that they're going to see the more and more projects are taking off. And I don't know if you want to call it FOMO. I don't know if you want to call it their competitors are doing it or aren't I doing it. But I think five years, I think that's a very, very, very aggressive time frame where they could very well be left in the dust within five years. That's a lifetime.

Drew: Yeah, it is. 100%. I like to say I've been in crypto for seven odd years. And we talk about humans to dog, you multiply it by seven. In this world, you multiply it by probably 20 or 30. And it is because things are constantly evolving. They're constantly changing, updating, modifying. And five years is an eternity. We see that same kind of accelerated adoption and growth in AI too. There's a whole different angle. Both of them are factors of digital. And a lot of people are trying to interconnect the two between AI as well as Web3. And I think that that's going to be a very, very big, interesting intersection over the next, call it 18 to 24 months, max.

Bill: Yeah, as these massive data centers come online, right? Building all around here, just on the outskirts of Atlanta, I see them all the time. I'm sure you guys do in your cities.

The Extra Floor: Personal Insights from George Kushner

George Kushner: For sure. Yep. All right, George. Well, before we wrap up, we always like to take our guests to what we call The Extra Floor. It's a set of five questions to help listeners get to know the human side of who's with us today. So these are just quick questions, gut level responses on your side, just whatever comes to your mind first. There's no right or wrong answer, of course. So number one, what's a book or a podcast that has shaped how you think?

George Kushner: A book, I would say Liar's Poker. Should I expound or is it a one answer deal? No, you don't have to limit yourself to a few words. I read Liar's Poker. If anybody knows what that book is, it's about the bond trading world with Solomon Brothers back in the day of the 1980s. And I was probably either in college or, yeah, probably in college. And that was the catalyst that, that and one other book, that was the catalyst of what really pushed my trajectory into the initial bond trading world, actually, in financial services. So that would be it by far and away.

Drew: What's the best piece of career or life advice you've ever received?

George Kushner: I only have 25 plaques of these all around my office. Don't ever, ever, ever, never, ever quit or give up until that last breath of air has escaped your body.

Bill: All right. What's a small daily habit or a ritual that makes a big difference for you?

George Kushner: Exercise. But the other thing is I'm a very, very disciplined, regimented guy. So I get up at the same time. I immediately have breakfast. I go through my emails and do any type of calls early in the morning. I then go work out and then I go about my day. I now have this thing, so I work from home. So every hour on the hour I get up and I have a pretty decent sized basement. I go down there and get my steps in, walk around for 10, 15 minutes with my phone. So if I have to do calls, whatever, take it. And I have dinner pretty much at the same time every night. I go to bed at the same time and I'm just a very, very disciplined, regimented guy. And I think that that helps me tick like that. There's an old saying, it's the structure that sets you free.

Drew: I like that. You are a free man. What's something you've learned to appreciate more with time?

George Kushner: That's a good one. What have I? I would probably say what I've come to really appreciate and it's sad and scary is the fleetness of time, of how quick time goes. I think when you're a younger man and younger woman, you think about school, think about when you're in middle school and you cannot wait for the summer. School year drags on and on and on, summer, and all of a sudden you're right back there with your friends. And as an adult, it's kind of a cool exercise, but not only does time speed up, but as you get older and older and older. And I like to say, I coined this phrase to my friends and family, I said, time slowly flies by. And it's true. You're a young man or woman, it's forever. And as you get older, that clock just starts ticking. So I think that I've really grown to appreciate the fleetness of time and carpe diem. You have to live every day as it were your last and be around your friends and families and be around things that make you happy.

Bill: Okay, George, last one. When you're not working, what do you love to do that recharges you?

George Kushner: Exercise, reading and hanging out with my family because I don't get to see a lot of them during the work week for the most part. And my work week is seven days a week. So those are the things that I like. Again, I think exercise, I think most people will say exercise is a huge, huge stress relief for them and detox, if you will. And I thoroughly enjoy reading as I get, I like to tell people, when I was in my mid thirties, I knew everything about everything. And if you challenged me, I'll get dogmatic about it. In my mid, late fifties. Now I can assure you, I know nothing about anything, but I'm willing to shut my mouth, listen and learn. So I'm very inquisitive and I love to read and just stay abreast of a lot of different topics.

Drew: Yeah, I think the extra floor could turn into a whole other episode if we wanted it to, Drew.

Bill: Yeah, that was a really nice description of just wisdom itself. I feel like just the process of developing wisdom, it's really cool.

Drew: That's great. Well, George, for listeners, we'll put these in the show notes too, but tell our listeners that are just audible only that want to follow your work and learn more about tokenization or anything that we've talked about today. Where can they find you? What's the best way to reach you?

George Kushner: Email or LinkedIn, and they can find me LinkedIn. It's George Kushner. My name is George Kushner. And then you can also follow this company that I'm, or check it out. It's called Toyo, Toyo.com, the word toy and O-W, and that's where we're doing the real world asset tokenization. And I'm insanely passionate about this space. And I really, really do mean this when I say this, whoever is listening and has even a morsel of interest in wanting to learn more, please contact me and I will absolutely arrange a call and be more than happy to, I don't care if you're, this is the first time you've ever heard the word tokenization, or you're right on the precipice of really trying to launch something in the space. Please, I would love to speak with you and see if and how I can help.

Bill: Fantastic. Yeah. Well, George, thank you so much for being with us today. And as always, thanks to our listeners for joining us. Be sure to follow and like, subscribe, and we'll see you all in the next episode of Peak Property Performance.

George Kushner: Thanks everyone. Thanks, really enjoyed it guys. Appreciate it.