A fresh crop of startups and protocols is pushing crypto further into the real-estate stack — not for speculative token trading, but for real-world utilities: property tokenization, crypto-backed mortgages, and rent and bill payments settled in stablecoins.

What’s different this time is maturity: clearer legal structures, regulated and widely adopted stablecoins, and blockchain infrastructure built for institutional use — with companies targeting specific friction points rather than attempting to “disrupt real estate” wholesale.

Below, we break down the key players and protocols shaping this shift, the recent IPOs and infrastructure milestones that matter, and what’s already possible today for landlords, tenants, and investors — along with the risks, open questions, and a practical checklist for experimenting safely.

Key Players & Protocols

Elephant Protocol

Elephant is one of the newer protocols aiming to make property data and ownership proofs interoperable, transparent and cheaper. It’s focused on standardizing titles, property records, proof of ownership, so that tokenization, escrow, and title workflows can plug in cleanly. By decoupling the legal/document/legal chain from the digital proofs (while ensuring they legally map back), Elephant is expected to reduce friction for many tokenized real estate systems.

If tokenized real estate is to scale, protocols like Elephant sit at the foundation — enabling financing, investment, and payment layers to operate on clean, interoperable property data.

Milo

Milo is tackling the crypto-mortgage side. Its value proposition: let people tap crypto (BTC/ETH etc.) as collateral to finance properties or refinance, rather than forcing them to sell. That lets crypto-native users maintain exposure while using those holdings to access housing finance. Risks include volatility, margin calls, regulatory / tax complexity—but the product meets a real desire in the market.

Manifest

Manifest is particularly interesting because it aims to bring U.S. private equity real estate on-chain in a scalable and liquid form. Some highlights:

• Raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding in 2025, led by VanEck Ventures and Lattice Fund, with participants like Compound and SALT.
  
• Product: $USH (“U.S. Housing”), a tokenized real estate vehicle backed by Home Equity Investments (HEIs) — i.e. equity in owner-occupied housing rather than rental properties or commercial real estate.
  
• Goals include lower fees, global accessibility (anyone, anywhere), tax efficiency (structures designed for long-term/perpetual tax deferral), enabling composability in DeFi (tokens that can be used for leverage, borrowing, etc.).
  
• Transparency: every asset in the portfolio, HEIs, valuations, collateral health, etc., on chain.

In short, Manifest is aiming for a tokenized real estate asset with utility like yield plus DeFi composability, but backed by traditional home equity, aiming to overcome many of the pitfalls of earlier tokenization attempts.

Recent IPOs & Stablecoin / Blockchain Infrastructure that Matter

Several crypto / fintech companies going public or enlarging operations are helping to build confidence and infrastructure in real-estate + blockchain use cases.

• Figure (FIGR) — Uses its own Provenance blockchain to manage home equity and other loans. Its IPO in September 2025 pushed visibility for real estate lending + blockchain infrastructure.
  
• Circle — As issuer of USDC and active in payments & treasury services, Circle’s IPO ups institutional confidence in stablecoins as a tool for real-world payments.
  
• Gemini — Similarly, their expanding public listing / institutional trust in custody & payments enhances the credibility of firms accepting or using crypto / stablecoins in property or rent contexts.

These help reduce two key risk vectors:

1. Regulatory & institutional trust — having regulated, audited, trusted stablecoin issuers/custodians vs. small unknown ones.
   
2. On-ramp/off-ramp friction — making it easier for property managers, landlords, REITs to accept stablecoins, convert them, and comply with accounting / tax / AML/KYC.

Stablecoins & Real-Estate Payments: What’s Already Possible

Here are real use cases and integrations happening now, or very near term, in rent or property payments via stablecoins:

Use Case	Players / Tools	What they enable	Challenges
Rent / bills paid in USDC / stablecoins	Payment processors like BitPay; apps that let users pay ordinary bills from their crypto wallet; platforms enabling merchants / landlords to accept crypto & convert on receipt	Tenants could pay rent in USDC; landlords get stablecoins or converted USD; lower cross-border friction; speed	Regulatory/tax reporting, volatility if landlord holds crypto, custody & financial regulations, local laws about what forms of payment are legal
Tokenized real estate equity	Companies like RealT, Manifest’s upcoming $USH, etc.	Allows fractional exposure to real estate; trade in smaller units; global participation; potentially DeFi utility (borrow, leverage)	Illiquidity in practice; legal/property law complexity; valuation frequency; ensuring compliance in many jurisdictions
Crypto-backed mortgages / loans	Milo, Figure, others	Using crypto holdings as collateral to finance property, or home equity lines of credit issued via blockchain infrastructure	Volatility risk; regulatory risk; ensuring legal enforceability of collateral; proper valuation & margin maintenance; tax implications if collateral is sold/liquidated

Tenant & Landlord Checklist: How to Experiment Safely

Here’s a one-pager checklist landlords or tenants can use to try out crypto real estate or rent-with-stablecoin setups, without too much risk.

Stakeholder	Steps / Precautions
Landlord	1. Use a reliable payment processor that accepts stablecoins (e.g. USDC) and handles conversion or custody properly. 2. Document terms clearly in lease: payment method, what happens if crypto/stablecoin value fluctuates, what exchange rate / chain / token version accepted, who bears conversion cost. 3. Ensure compliance: KYC/AML, tax reporting, local laws about what forms of payment are legal in your jurisdiction. 4. Consider converting stablecoins to fiat quickly (or hold across trusted custody) to avoid volatility or regulatory risk. 5. Work with partners (custodians, legal, stablecoin issuers) that are transparent, audited, regulated. 6. Monitor smart contract risk: if accepting payments via on-chain smart contracts, ensure contracts are audited.
Tenant / Investor	1. Understand volatility exposure: while stablecoins are stable, any tokenized equity, or crypto-collateralized mortgages, or HEIs will have risks. 2. Read governance & legal framework: what rights does a token give (ownership? cash flows? appreciation? what if home value falls?). 3. Check tax implications, both in your country and in U.S. real estate if investing via tokenization. 4. Use trusted wallets / platforms; verify custody and regulatory status. 5. Start small: maybe fractional real-estate tokens or rend payments in stablecoins via processor rather than direct exposure to ownership, to learn mechanics. 6. Keep records: payments, token ownership, exchanges or price at time of payment, as needed for taxes.

Risks, Open Questions & What to Watch

• Legal / regulatory uncertainty: many jurisdictions do not yet recognize tokenized or fractional real estate as traditional property rights. Enforcement, title insurance, zoning/housing law may complicate things.
  
• Valuation frequency and transparency: how often are HEIs / token-backed real estate portfolios revalued? If values drift, does that impact collateral or value of tokens?
  
• Liquidity: tokenized real estate promises secondary market liquidity, but in practice trading volumes, spreads, and the ability to exit may remain limited at first.
  
• Tax: both for investors and for rent payments, depending on country, how gains / income are taxed, especially for foreign investors.
  
• Custody & smart contract risk: faulty contracts, hacking, or counterparty risk if using third parties to manage mortgages or title protocols.

We are entering a phase where the layers of real estate and crypto are beginning to align:

• Infrastructure protocols like Elephant for titles and ownership proofs
• Financing tools like Milo and Figure enabling crypto-collateralized lending and home-equity products
• Investment vehicles like Manifest bringing home-equity exposure on-chain in more accessible, composable formats
• Stablecoin payment rails strengthened by public crypto and fintech companies backing auditability, compliance, and institutional trust

For landlords, tenants, and investors, the opportunity is increasingly tangible — but the winners in this next phase will be those who adopt incrementally, partner with regulated infrastructure, and treat crypto as plumbing rather than a bet.