Yousuf Mohamed al-Jaida, QFCA chief executive officer addresses one of the panel sessions at the Qatar Economic Forum 2025, Wednesday. PICTURE: Shaji Kayamkulam
“The first asset class that we would like to address is real estate as there is a lot of oversupply in the market, and it also solves a significant problem,” QFC Authority chief executive officer Yousuf Mohamed al-Jaida told the second day of the Fifth Qatar Economic Forum, powered by Bloomberg.
The real estate industry is on the verge of a major transformation, supported by technology. The tokenisation leverages blockchain technology to create digital tokens representing ownership in real estate assets.
The real estate tokenisation is the process of converting the value of a physical property into digital tokens that can be bought, sold, or traded on a blockchain platform. Each token represents a fractional ownership stake in the property, allowing investors to participate in real estate markets without the need for substantial capital. This approach not only enhances accessibility to realty investments but also improves liquidity and transparency within the market.
Highlighting the lack of access into this (realty) class; he said looking at towers in the West Bay, Lusail or in any other areas in Qatar, a lot of such assets are owned by one or two or maximum three landlords and these are “significant” ticket sizes of minimum $500mn.
“So, tokenising a tower or two, I think will do great good for the economy and a lot more access and liquidity to the real estate market,” al-Jaida said one of the panel session ‘’Crypto & Digital Assets: Investing in the New Era’.
The QFC had last year launched its digital assets framework, a comprehensive and innovative regime for the creation and regulation of digital assets in the QFC, paving way for companies to offer token services.
“Our entire focus, resources and investments have gone towards tokenisation and the reason we have gone that route is that it solves a real problem we have in the economy,” he said, adding democratising real assets such as securities or real estate helps drive the economy go forward.
Quoting research report of The Trading View, he said the real world assets (RWA) tokenisation is projected to become a $30tn market by 2030. The market for tokenised illiquid assets is projected to reach $16tn by 2030, he also said, quoting reports from Boston Consulting Group. “So, there has been a lot of focus on tokenisation,” al-Jaida said.
He said the development of the digital assets framework, which is one of the important goals established by the Third Financial Sector Strategic Plan, provides not only legal recognition of smart contracts but also establishes legal and regulatory foundation for tokenisation, a key tool to protect sensitive data.
Besides tokenisation of real estate, al-Jaida said the QFC would also like to see Islamic securitisation through its corporate registration and securitised bonds as well as energy infrastructure in the near future.
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