Crypto exchange platform CoinMetro has announced that Estonia-based Hansecoin will be the first project on its ICO Express platform, which gives ICOs access to funding rounds, with tokens issued immediately tradable on the former’s exchange.

Hansecoin is a project to tokenise hard assets such as real estate, enabling the creation of Asset-Backed Tokens to provide investment access into traditionally illiquid assets such as real estate.

The project was conceived by Dr. Chris Kacher and Axel Jacob. The latter has a background in structured finance and corporate real estate development since the early nineties, whilst the former has 25 years’ experience trading stocks, and has been involved in crypto since 2013, including early-stage development of Ethereum.

Together, they spotted a funding gap in obtaining development capital for asset-backed projects between EUR 1.5 million and EUR 10 million in size. These projects are too large for friends and family investment but too small for listed funds and wealth management.

Hansecoin is positioned as a solution to securing investment for these projects. It will be fully regulated and compliant with the requirements of the Estonian Financial Supervisory Authority. Working with CoinMetro, Hansecoin is building the software and infrastructure platform which will tokenise the first use case, a midsize real estate development project consisting of 250 apartments and houses in Tallinn, Estonia.

Dr. Kacher comments: “Hansecoin has been designed to address the significant gap between two areas of capital raise. At the lower end, we have current small enterprise banking, friends and family investment which is typically under EUR 1.5 million. At the high end, we have large scale project financing, investments by existing listed funds and wealth managers, which focus on capital raises above EUR 10 million. Hansecoin is perfectly positioned between the two.”

Kevin Murko, CEO of CoinMetro adds: “Asset-backed tokens are the next phase of crypto financing; the asset provides a floor to the price and increases stability versus speculative tokens. Hansecoin’s residential development in our home city of Tallinn is a perfect example of an asset-backed token, and that’s why we have chosen it as the first project on our ICO Express platform.”