Around the same time, the Financial Times published a piece noting that while investors are betting on AI-fueled chaos and disruption, history tells a different story. Past technological revolutions—from the PC to the internet and cloud—rarely wiped out incumbents. Savvy established players adapted, integrated the new capabilities, and often emerged stronger.

Reading these together crystallized something I’ve been observing in our work at Datarella and across the broader tech landscape: the most probable path for AI in business is neither a dystopian job apocalypse nor a chaotic upending of entire industries. It’s a pragmatic, evolutionary integration — one that rewards organizations willing to embrace AI’s inherent “weirdness” while building solid foundations to prevent disorder.

As someone who has spent decades building companies and helping enterprises navigate digital transformation, I believe this balanced view is crucial. AI won’t replace everything overnight, but it will reshape how we work — if we let it.

Why AI So Often “Dies” in Traditional IT Settings

Mollick’s diagnosis rings especially true because we see this pattern repeatedly in enterprise environments. AI isn’t deterministic software with predictable, repeatable outputs. It’s generative, highly context-dependent, and frequently surprising. When handed over to IT teams whose primary mandates are security, compliance, uptime, and cost control, the instinctive reaction is understandable but often counterproductive:

• Wrapping every experiment in lengthy approval processes
• Demanding detailed ROI projections before any meaningful pilot
• Forcing AI into legacy tech stacks without rethinking underlying workflows
• Prioritizing only the safest, most obvious use cases

The outcome? Countless pilots that never scale. Recent analyses, including Deloitte’s 2026 State of AI in the Enterprise, show that while employee access to AI tools has exploded, the move from experimentation to full production remains limited. Issues like poor data quality, skills gaps, and overly cautious governance continue to create friction.

Harvard Business Review has noted a similar phenomenon: widespread AI usage paired with disappointing returns, with adoption often stalling at the integration stage. The core mistake isn’t poor execution—it’s treating AI like just another CRM or ERP module rather than a fundamentally new way of thinking and working.

History Offers Reason for Optimism

The Financial Times article provides a reassuring counterpoint. Technology revolutions rarely play out as pure creative destruction. Incumbents who invest in complementary capabilities—new skills, redesigned processes, and updated organizational structures—tend to adapt and thrive.

In 2026, I expect the real winners won’t be only the flashy AI-native startups. They will be established companies that intelligently combine their deep domain expertise and proprietary data with AI’s capabilities. Those who redesign workflows for genuine human-AI collaboration (sometimes called “co-intelligence”) and scale thoughtfully from pilots to enterprise-grade agentic systems will gain the edge.

Reports from PwC and others speak of a “disciplined march to value”: clear strategies, measurable outcomes, and governance frameworks that protect without suffocating innovation.

What the Most Likely Future of AI in Business Looks Like

Looking ahead to late 2026 and 2027, here’s the trajectory I consider most probable:

1. Scaling from pilots to production — More organizations will move a significantly higher share of AI projects into live use, particularly through agentic AI systems that handle multi-step workflows autonomously.
2. The J‑curve of productivity — Expect initial periods of flat or even negative returns as companies rewire processes and roles. Once the complementary changes (new data pipelines, decision protocols, and team structures) are in place, gains should accelerate sharply.
3. Governance maturing — Robust frameworks for responsible agentic AI, data quality, and risk management will become standard. “Shadow AI” will gradually decline as secure, enterprise-ready platforms improve.
4. Incumbents leveraging their data moats — Organizations with clean, well-governed data and strong domain knowledge — especially in regulated or complex industries—will often outperform pure AI disruptors.

This isn’t a utopian revolution or a total failure. It’s an evolutionary transformation, provided we avoid the trap of over-standardizing AI too early.

Five Practical Principles for Embracing AI’s Weirdness

Drawing from Mollick’s insights, historical patterns, and the latest enterprise reports, here are the principles I believe forward-thinking leaders should adopt:

1. Deliberately embrace the weirdness — Create space for teams to experiment and discover unexpected applications. Encourage “labs” or crowdsourced exploration. Treat AI as a creative collaborator rather than a simple automation engine.
2. Invest in rock-solid data foundations — Data quality and governance remain the biggest barriers. Without trustworthy, well-integrated data, even the most advanced models produce unreliable results. This is an area where specialized expertise in unifying silos and building real-time, compliant pipelines makes a decisive difference.
3. Redesign workflows for human-AI co-intelligence — The goal isn’t to automate jobs out of existence but to augment human strengths. Let people focus on judgment, creativity, and relationships while AI handles analysis, drafting, and routine tasks.
4. Deploy governed, secure agentic systems — Autonomous agents represent the next frontier, but they require thoughtful orchestration, threat modeling, and compliance built in from the start.
5. Measure what truly matters and iterate patiently — Look beyond vanity metrics. Track real business impact—revenue, cost efficiency, customer outcomes—and accept that returns often follow a J‑curve.

Reflections from the Trenches

At Datarella, we’ve been helping organizations move past the hype and pilot purgatory for years. Our focus on secure AI agent development, full-stack modernization, privacy-preserving architectures, and (where appropriate) decentralized approaches is designed precisely for this moment: enabling companies to harness AI’s strange power without inviting chaos.

Whether it’s building production-ready autonomous agents, creating reliable data platforms, or integrating AI into complex legacy environments, the key is combining technical depth with practical business judgment.

The future of AI in business isn’t about tearing down your existing structures or gambling on total disruption. It’s about evolving how your organization learns, decides, and creates value—by thoughtfully embracing AI as the odd, powerful tool it is, while strengthening the data, governance, and cultural foundations it requires.

If you’re ready to move from interesting pilots to scalable impact—without letting AI “die in IT”—I’d be happy to explore how we can support your journey.

Let’s connect.

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With Datarella, we have watched as organizations poured fortunes into technology that created impenetrable digital walls, only to have their own employees politely open the front door for anyone with a convincing story. This paradox — that our greatest security vulnerability sits between the keyboard and the chair — is precisely why vali.now exists. It’s a project built on the understanding that to truly protect assets, we must first understand the psychology of the people we trust to protect them.

Cybersecurity isn’t really about firewalls and encryption anymore. It’s about the squishy, unpredictable thing sitting between the keyboard and the chair: human psychology. While we build increasingly sophisticated digital fortresses, attackers have discovered the easiest way in is through the front door held open by a helpful, trusting employee.

The Digital Con Artist’s Playbook

Social engineering attacks represent a fundamental shift in cybersecurity threats. Instead of battling machines, attackers target the cognitive wiring that makes us human. These digital con artists have weaponized our most basic psychological tendencies against us.

Phishing has evolved beyond the clumsy Nigerian prince emails of yesteryear. Today’s attacks are sophisticated, personalized campaigns that mirror legitimate communications so perfectly they bypass our mental spam filters. The attacker isn’t just guessing your password – they’re creating a scenario where you willingly hand it over, convinced you’re helping IT resolve a critical issue.

Vishing takes this psychological manipulation to our ears. There’s something uniquely disarming about a human voice, especially when it’s delivering news with manufactured urgency. When someone claiming to be from your bank’s fraud department calls, your brain instinctively shifts into compliance mode, bypassing the critical thinking you’d apply to a suspicious email.

Pretexting attacks are perhaps the most insidious because they build elaborate narratives tailored to their targets. The attacker might spend weeks researching their mark, learning their job responsibilities, their coworkers, and their pain points. By the time they make their approach, they’re not strangers – they’re the helpful colleague from another department who desperately needs access to that client file.

The Psychology of Trust and Compliance

What makes these attacks so effective isn’t technical sophistication – it’s deep psychological manipulation. Social engineers exploit universal human traits that evolution has hardwired into us:

Authority bias makes us defer to perceived experts, even when their requests seem suspicious. That “IT technician” demanding immediate access to your system triggers the same compliance we’d show a police officer or doctor.

Reciprocity drives us to return favors. Attackers often offer small “helpful” gestures before making their big ask. By doing you a minor service, they create an obligation you feel compelled to repay – often with your credentials.

Scarcity and urgency short-circuit rational thought. “Limited time offer” or “Your account will be suspended in 10 minutes” activates our fear of missing out, pushing us to act before thinking.

The Man-Machine Conflict in Security

Herein lies the fundamental paradox of modern cybersecurity: we’ve built machines that operate on logic and rules, then connected them to humans who operate on emotion and instinct. This creates a dangerous interface where the machine’s predictability meets the human’s exploitability.

Security systems assume rational actors following protocols. Humans, however, are walking bundles of cognitive biases and emotional responses. We click links because we’re curious. We share passwords because we want to be helpful. We ignore warnings because we’re busy.

This conflict plays out daily in organizations worldwide. The security team implements sophisticated multi-factor authentication, only to have users share their one-time codes with attackers claiming urgency. They deploy advanced email filtering, yet employees still forward suspicious messages to IT, asking, “Is this real?” – after already clicking the links.

The Arms Race Within Our Minds

As artificial intelligence and automation handle more routine security tasks, attackers are doubling down on human-targeted attacks. Why spend weeks trying to crack encryption when you can convince an employee to hand over the keys in a five-minute phone call?

The future of cybersecurity isn’t about building better walls – it’s about building better humans. This means security awareness training that goes beyond “don’t click suspicious links” to explain the psychological manipulation at play. It means creating organizational cultures where questioning authority is encouraged, not punished.

Most importantly, it means acknowledging that the human element isn’t a weakness to be eliminated, but a strength to be understood. Our creativity, intuition, and pattern recognition – when properly trained – can detect threats that automated systems miss.

The attackers have already figured this out. The question is: will we adapt our defenses to match the reality of human psychology, or will we keep building stronger cages while leaving the door wide open?

The post The Human Element: Why Social Engineering Wins in the Age of Machines appeared first on MICHAEL REUTER.

DIAM is the Decentralized Invisual Art Marketplace. It intends to value a new form of creativity, a new form of art: Invisual Art. The idea of DIAM is to unleash creativity on a global scale. DIAM’s dream is to augment human beings through art. On DIAM, art lovers can purchase invisual art experiences using $OCEAN, a crypto-currency that uniquely and in an unforgeable way guarantees the purchase of art experiences. DIAM’s decentralized architecture allows artists to showcase their work and present their art in a completely autonomous process, guaranteeing them a fair share of income.

Invisual Art

Invisual art is art that exists other than in the form of artworks. The practices of invisual art have in common the fact of existing other than in the form of a work of art. There is no definition of invisual art, if not this common point. Invisual art is an art that exists most often as an experience and not as an object. The invisual practices are extremely varied: lifestyle, behaviors, experiments, state of mind

DIAM Goals

• To enable invisual artists to make a living from their work;
• To enable anyone to become an artist through the valuation of their invisual creativity;
• To provide a tool to encourage inventiveness in art by mixing the latest technologies with the latest form of art in order to build the next-generation art market;
• To encourage the emergence of new types of collectors and investors in art;
• Marketing art as an experience.

How To Buy Invisual Art?

At the official DIAM launch event on 11 November 2022, my friend Alexandre Gurita, Director of the Biennale de Paris and of the Ecole Nationale d’Art (ENDA), and Corina Mila, Enseignante-Chercheuse at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, introduced the audience to the concept of Invisual Art. Michael Reuter, Co-founder & CEO of Datarella, and Rebecca L. Johnson, CTO of Datarella, have demonstrated how to buy invisual art at DIAM using datatokens. Special guest Casey Herd, Artistic Director of BALLET RISING, has explained how DIAM enables Ballet lovers all over the world to immerse in the ballet experience using DIAM datatokens.

Feel free to register for free and experience the latest development at the intersection of technology and art!

If you are interested to learn more about the Decentralized Invisual Art Marketplace, feel free to follow DIAM on Twitter, and LinkedIn and discuss all things invisual art with the DIAM team – see you there!

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We‘ve developed Track & Trust, a tracking solution for humanitarian aid logistics that leverages satellite communication. In the mobility sector, we have created SSI apps and smart parking solutions to enable secure P2P communications, streamline traffic flows, and minimize CO2 emissions. With 16 other companies, we’re part of the Gaia‑X consortium moveID that will create the decentralized digital infrastructure for mobility in Europe. And much more!

And, in 2020, we decided to leverage our tech stack and created the Datarella Web3 Company Builder Model.

RAAY Real Estate

In 2020, we have launched RAAY Real Estate (RAAY RE) as our first standalone project, together with two partners from the real estate industry. Our RAAY RE joint venture with Hammer AG and Wertgrund Immobilien AG was the first to tokenize a commercial property, fully licensed by German regulator BaFin – Connex Coin was a breakthrough! RAAY RE will become the legal framework of our future IMMOBIX project and token.

MOBIX Marketplace

In 2021, we launched our micromobility marketplace MOBIX. By using the MOBIX app, more than 350,000 daily active users in over 120 countries are earning MOBIX Miles while riding eco-friendly vehicles, such as scooters, bikes, eBikes, eMopeds, or cargo bikes. By incentivizing users to swap their combustion engines with zero-emission transportation, MOBIX helps to decrease CO2 emissions and to make cities more liveable. In the meantime, MOBIX has evolved into the MOBIX Marketplace GmbH, a Munich-based company owned by Datarella, and Fetch.ai.

MOBIX family

The latest brainchild of Datarella’s Web3 Company Builder Model is MOBIX family – a decentralized gig economy network. MOBIX family is the first project in the Company Builder Model that will be driven with the support of an external team. Whereas RAAY RE and MOBIX have been built by internal Datarella resources, a young team of aspiring entrepreneurs from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has taken care of the Family’s first steps. The team has presented the first MOBiX family MVP during START Ideasprint 2022, a 4‑day hackathon based out of Munich.

NOMIX

Later in 2022, the next project – NOMIX –  will launch its BIOCLOCK app. Leveraging the same tech stack as other Datarella Web3 companies, NOMIX will help users around the world maximize their healthspans, i.e. living longer while staying healthy!

We at Datarella are very happy to see more and more teams using our Web3 tools and applications, and creating new ventures! If you are interested in joining an existing Web3 team or you want to pitch your own idea, please contact us!

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Since business model innovation comes down to making changes to how a business earns its revenue, incurs its costs, and manages its risks, it should be seen as a continuous process rather than an organizational project task. Additionally, the procedural aspect comes another pre-condition for sustainable business model innovation: decentralization. Decentralization entails the non-existence of a central authority that aggregates power and defines all decision-making and the necessity to collaborate. Working in a decentralized network, all participants must co-ordinate their individual responsibilities and work packages. They have to agree upon a governance framework that defines the network’s rules and processes.

At first sight, decentralization is nothing you would expect to take place in a typical enterprise. Typically, companies or other organizations are hierarchically structured, with strategy and major decisions defined by an executive level, and lesser important aspects organized downwards in the org chart. Some organizational structures, e.g., the matrix organization, have implemented elements of decentralization. However, you won’t find a traditional organization besides cooperatives that would do without a top-down command chain. 

Since I have never been a huge fan of classic centralized structures, Blockchain technology has been warmly welcomed. For the first time, a foundational technology allows for decentralized structures and processes in the real world — by leveraging its inherent components of trustlessness, immutability, and security. For me, Blockchain is the paradigm shift needed to build and develop future businesses aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. In decentralized systems, enterprises become part of an overall protocol to add their organization-specific elements, s.a., brand, expertise, products, and services. Mechanisms ensure that each participant receives a fair return on investment into the network, depending on their contributions.

The Next Level Of Business Model Innovation — The Decentralized Network

On the basic level of a decentralized system, all participants collaboratively build, develop, and maintain foundational aspects of technology, legal, regulatory and organizational affairs. On the second level, participants cooperate in running transactions in the decentralized network. On the third layer, participants can compete with one another, building their individual applications on top of the jointly created platform. This 3‑layered Network Model is sustainable and resilient against economic downturns. However, it is far from being easily created. The challenges of setting up such a model mostly lie in overcoming the traditional beliefs of many top-level and most middle-level managers in enterprises, who try to preserve legacy organizational structures and processes. For them, terms, s.a. open-source, decentralization, or collaboration sound harmful to the economy. At least they are signs of weakness: who would collaborate or share IP if profits should be maximized when used proprietarily?

The simple truth is that the size of the economic cake isn’t fixed. And, the more enterprises collaborate, the lower their fixed costs. In other words,  collaboration pays-off. It does not only pay-off but is an indispensable presupposition for environmental-friendly, sustainable businesses. While many large enterprises have learned that cooperating on individual levels makes sense, only a few of them are ready to move to the next level and integrate not another model in their organization, but — vice versa — integrate their organization in a new (business) model. A generally more negative economic outlook, combined with the actual COVID-19 pandemic, will motivate more enterprises to think about entering the new level of business model innovation and joining decentralized networks in their respective industries.  

A Foundational Layer for Micromobility

I’m quite positive about the GAIA‑X Federated Data Infrastructure for Europe initiative that we, with Datarella, have joined recently. Its general approach is a truly decentralized one: (competing) enterprises and organizations from different domains come together. They are asked to join forces to create a n open, non-discriminating data infrastructure. In the mobility space, this will be used for all kinds of efficiency improvements, such as a better utilization of parking space, and for new offerings, such as shared micromobility services that allow for a seamless travel experience even in densely populated areas, both with significant positive environmental impacts. In 2021, we will see whether the GAIA‑X participants will make the open, decentralized intent come true!

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This move from one specific project to more diverse projects allow for many and diverse donations by donors. As simple and intuitive, it has been to donate to the first project, Water Wells, for West Africa, as easy it is to now select the favorite project and donate with just a few taps.

Today, we have onboarded a second project by YOU Foundation – The Power of Eggs. With this project, YOU Foundation demonstrates that a child’s life can be saved with just one egg per day. The on-site campaign includes training on healthy eating and knowledge about hard-boiled eggs. It also includes the purchase and acquisition of laying hens and cocks and effective rearing of laying hens, care, and medical care of the animals. Poultry farming enables parents to secure the livelihood of their families.

As already known from SmartAid, the donor can choose between donating via PayPal or credit card. After the payment has been processed, the donor gets a QR code that serves as her personal donations code. With this code, she can track her donation’s whereabouts on the most secure basis there is, on the SmartAid blockchain.

From Traceable Donations App SmartAid to Open Donation Blockchain

Since donating makes even more fun when being joined by others, the donor can share her donation code to motivate her friends and fellows to join in and donate, too!

We will soon onboard more projects, and – maybe – we have a nice idea for the last 24 days before X‑mas, too! Stay tuned — and, in the meantime, join the SmartAid community and donate your change!

The post Transforming Traceable Donations Into Open SmartAid Blockchain appeared first on MICHAEL REUTER.

In partnership with Fetch.ai, a Cambridge-based artificial intelligence lab, we today announced the launch of M‑ZONE, a smart city zoning infrastructure trial in Munich. Using AI-powered software agents to optimize resource usage and reduce the city’s carbon footprint, we predict the mass implementation of smart city infrastructure will result in 34,000t annual CO2 emission reduction.

Landlords and the City Council are interested in optimizing the parking space management to allow for available parking for all corporate tenants employees while organizing the traffic flow and preventing commuter traffic jams. Our system incentivizes community use of public transport through a tokenized incentive system while reducing the congestion that accounts for a great deal of Munich’s CO2 emissions.

Multiple Benefits for Stakeholders

• Individual commuters and drivers save time, money, and reduce driver stress.
• Property owners will get simplified approvals for new development projects.
• Tenants can lower their rents through dynamic parking spot sharing.
• The city council can optimize traffic flows.
• The environment benefits from saved CO2 emissions

M‑ZONE users are incentivized to reduce their number of car trips to the “Blockchain Building Connex” and adjacent corporate buildings through a reward system, measured by the utilization of parking spaces. Each registered user who is a regular car park user will be rewarded with a certain amount of tokens per minute for not parking at the parking lot. As soon as a car (or its related wallet address) is registered as ‘parked’ by the parking agent, the token flow to this wallet stops.

A Massive Reduction Of CO2 Emissions

Assuming a 10% reduction in car usage across Munich alone, the city would see a 34.000 tonnes annual CO2 emission reduction. Scaled up to cover all of Germany, which equates to 1.7 million tonnes CO2 reduction annually. This smart city solution can penetrate huge markets simply by tapping into wasted data and utilizing it efficiently.

Users are incentivized to reduce their number of car trips to the Connex and adjacent corporate offices through a reward system, measured by the utilization of parking spaces. Each registered user who is a regular car park user will be rewarded with a certain amount of tokens per minute for not parking at the parking lot. As soon as a car or its related wallet address is registered as parked by the Carpark AEA, the token airdrops to this wallet stop/slow. The number of tokens rewarded per wallet and minute depends on the current utilization of the parking lot.

Open, Decentralized, Self-Sovereign

In contrast to other smart parking projects, M‑ZONE is an open-sourced, decentralized smart city infrastructure project that values the individual by implementing a self-sovereign identity (SSI) framework. Besides the general openness of the used code that enables other developers to use it and build their applications on top of it, M‑ZONE uses our partner Fetch.ai’s public blockchain technology. In combination with Fetch.ai’s Autonomous Economic Agents (AEA), M‑ZONE is made to be implemented worldwide. The underlying Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) framework, which will be implemented in the next phase, allows for a completely non-proprietary, privacy-focused system that provides the individual with full control over her identity.

A Promising Collaborative Approach

The latter aspect contradicts enterprises’ traditional assumption that user data could be used freely and exploited. We at Datarella and Fetch.ai think that the individual should be in full control of who uses her data and for what purposes. We know that many incumbents are still attached to the legacy, platform, or ‘dirigiste’ thinking. However, there are also large enterprises that share our beliefs and are moving towards self-sovereignty. We think that M‑ZONE can serve as a good example for strengthening the individual perspective, and we have reasons to believe that we will be joined by like-minded partners soon.

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Why Donating Must Be Changed!

Time and again, potential donors wonder how difficult it still is, to donate to the right cause, and in an efficient and fun way. Often, you can’t donate using your mobile, or can’t even donate online. Then, you would donate to a certain general topic, rather than to a specific project. Last, but not least, as a donor, you can’t track and trace the path of your donation. Many potential donors are put off by clunky, complex, and intransparent donation processes. Given a huge amount of spare money many people in the rich parts of our world have available for being spent to a good cause, this is a wasted opportunity.

Enter SmartAid! 

Efficient, and easy-to-use, the blockchain-based web app does not only make donating fun but offers fervently desired transparency of the money flows: Right after having donated between 1 – 199 Euro, the donation will be stored on the SmartAid blockchain. The donor receives a tracking code to trace her donation until it reaches its destination. This so-called “traceable donation” is a world first.  Secure and immutable blockchain technology guarantees that all donations will reach the right beneficiary by making the flow of money transparent to the donor.

Security, Transparency, and Fun

Donating via SmartAid is not only secure, efficient, and transparent – it’s fun! A direct connection to a donor’s credit card or PayPal account allows for an easy process that even lets donors share their donations via Social Media, thus motivating others to share this experience and jointly support the charity project.

“For a long time, we at YOU Foundation have been looking for a way to enable individuals to donate to our charity projects all around the world. Therefore, we can’t wait to see SmartAid in action!”, says Ute-Henriette Ohoven, founder of YOU Foundation.

“Since 2015, we at Datarella have been working on Blockchain projects with our corporate partners, such as Bosch, Siemens, BMW, Merck, and international humanitarian organizations, such as the UN World Food Programme WFP, or UK Aid.  We are very happy to launch SmartAid, together with YOU Foundation, and we are highly curious how donors will perceive the new transparency of their donations”, adds Michael Reuter, CEO of Datarella.

Donate Now!

If you are interested in partnering with SmartAid in a CSR sponsorship relationship, please contact us!

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The magic sauce of RAAY RE lies in the combination of technology / digitization and the understanding and profound expertise in property management, as well as the real estate investment area. The folks at Hammer AG develop and run their own commercial properties, over at Wertgrund Immobilien AG billions of Euros are managed in residential real estate funds.

I was invited by Wertgrund CEO Thomas Meyer to elaborate on our vision of the Digital OS for Real Estate (German). Based on the successful launch of our Connex Coin, the first tokenized investment token in Germany, we are looking forward to launching more tokens in 2020 and see the first installation of our Smart Wallet, enabling users to handle financial transactions based on Blockchain technology. Tokens — or, programmable money — are the basis of several products and services we are offering with RAAY RE. I’m excited to be part of this digital revolution!

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At EXPO REAL 2019, Europe’s largest real estate fair, we presented the first details. We now received the final approval by German financial regulatory body BaFin and have started with the sale of Connex Coin, open to Friends & Family. Here’s the story of Connex Coin.

The idea of Connex Coin was born in 2018. Then, we discussed digitization projects in the field of real estate funds with Thomas Meyer, founder, and CEO of Wertgrund Immobilien AG, a residential real estate fund manager. Shortly afterward, we started a similar conversation with Hans Hammer, founder, and CEO of Hammer AG, a commercial real estate developer. It became clear within weeks: we should have these conversations together, as a team.

Fast forward: In July 2019, we founded our new company RAAY Real Estate (RAAY RE) as a joint venture of Hammer, Wertgrund, and Datarella. The purpose of RAAY RE is to offer blockchain-based products and services to the real estate industry, which itself is a late adopter regarding digitization efforts. We decided to start RAAY RE with the tokenisation of a Hammer-owned property, located in central Munich. With the Connex building, we have a first-class property in one of the best real estate locations in Europe, with first-class tenants — in short: the best product you can imagine for the start of a product category in your company! 

By tokenizing this property, we provide the perfect investment opportunity — especially for retail investors — since individuals can become real estate investors starting at 10 EUR. The Connex Coin token sale will take place from March to May 2020. Connex Coin owners will receive an interest of 3% on their investments and can sell Connex Coin back to the issuer. In the first phase, there will be no public trading of Connex Coin, since at the moment there are no EU-compliant cryptocurrency exchanges that offer trading security tokens. As soon as there is approval from financial regulators, Connex Coin will be one of the first security tokens listed on exchanges in Europe.

Connex Coin is the first token issued by RAAY RE, others will follow. We are planning to launch more token sales for self-owned real estate properties in 2020. Additionally, we will offer tokenization as a service to players in the real estate industry. This offering comprises the complete tokenization process, including technical, legal, and regulatory elements, based on an existing long-term real estate expertise.

In addition to our tokenization service, at RAAY RE we offer a variety of tools and products that can be used by real estate developers, owners, and funds, ranging from KYC onboarding processes, to smart digital (crypto) wallets. Our clients benefit from the in-depth technical expertise of Datarella, known for running large blockchain projects on a global level.

With the launch of Connex Coin, RAAY RE can prove that blockchain technology can be leveraged to make payment and transaction processes within real estate more efficient, thus paving the way to a digitized future for the real estate industry.

The acquisition of this investment involves considerable risks and can lead to the complete loss of the invested assets.

Risk Disclosure § 12 VermAnlG

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