One of Germany’s leading HTW professors and real estate expert thinks so
You’ve heard the hype. Blockchain will change banking, blockchain will improve the supply chain, blockchain is the new internet, and so on. The truth is, the distributed ledger technology will transform the trust economy but at this point many use cases are still in the research or test phase.
Dr Katarina Adam is a professor at HTW Berlin and one of blockchain’s biggest proponents in Germany. She is also one of the co-founders of SIMMST, a disruptive new company aiming to incorporate blockchain into the German property market.
The real estate scene in the country is different to the home ownership-focused aspirations of the US and wider European markets. Just 52% of German households own their own home according to figures published by Eurostat. Respectably, Germans are happier renting, often for decades at a time. Dr Adam and her SIMMST co-founders want to make the process much easier.
“My vision is (to make it) not so problematic for a tenant to rent a new apartment” says Dr Adam. “We thought it could be very helpful, especially for tenants, to get a reputation platform where they can create their own data.”
In addition to teaching and co-founding a blockchain company, she is also writing the first German-language guide to blockchain, due out in the summer. We were lucky to find some time in her diary recently to hear more about SIMMST and her passion for blockchain technology. Listen below
