Why I’m leaving the U.S.

This summer, 2023, I am leaving the United States indefinitely. Born and raised as a U.S. citizen, as a now 42 year-old, it seems surreal that this is a thing I’m doing for the sole purpose of protecting my constitutional rights, company, and family, from government overreach. This is my story.

I’m the founder of the blockchain company Realio, which as the name may suggest, is focused on building out digital infrastructure geared toward bringing real-world assets such as real estate on-chain. We started building this company in 2018 full-time, and have spent a lot of time and money towards its development. From the start, our core focus has been on compliance with regulations given that investing in real-world assets, whether on blockchain or not, is generally subject to securities laws. After-all, investing in real estate isn’t new, and neither are securities laws, so doing this “on blockchain” sounded very do-able.

Fast forward to 2022, having survived through the COVID economy crash (mainly because the crypto economy was growing so fast), we are growing and feeling optimistic on the business having issued, compliantly, multiple digital security tokens on our tech platform. We generally stayed away from and ignored most of the stuff happening in crypto, which also happened to be where all the money was going, because of a belief that compliance is achievable and where things are headed. A lot of people got very rich chasing the fast money, whether anonymously or otherwise, but we stayed the course. We even opted to “tokenize” our own company via a compliant digital security token issuance despite the limited market for “compliant” tokens and extremely robust market for initial coin offerings of tokens that trade more freely globally. Fortunately, we managed to raise enough to keep building for a few years, and as a crypto native company, ride the bull market to its full extent. We are very grateful for the support provided by companies like Algorand who invested in us via their token ALGO (which just this morning I had to listen to Jim Cramer and Gary Gensler trash it as a ponzi scheme and illegal security). If it weren’t for Algorand’s generous investment, along with the enormous growth of the ALGO economy, we may have been in a much different situation with funding.

The greater part of 2020 through 2023 was spent on compliance. We managed to raise significant capital for a flagship fund that we tokenized on our platform, compliantly, and we spent years burning cash on top legal representation toward registration of the fund with the SEC under the 40 act. The amount of money we spent on this is greater than the entire operating budget of many small start-ups. Toward the end of 2022, after multiple calls with SEC staff to explain the structure, we are ready to file. Then FTX happened. Soon after, via an email exchange with my attorney, I was informed that the SEC staff is shutting down all registrations of “tokenized” funds who seek to trade on a licensed ATS. Pretty much our only path to registration or compliance. Upset, I wrote down the loss of effort toward this and moved on to restructure the vehicle to be exempt from the 40 act, which oddly enough will create a much better digital product anyway.

In parallel, and also through a very expensive process, we were filing for a Regulation CF portal license with FINRA. Again, we had multiple calls with staff, addressed all issues, and filed. At about the same time (end of 2022, post FTX), FINRA requested a call with us to review our application details. In good faith, we prepared for the call and answered all questions. We couldn’t help but feel however that the call was a kind of setup in order to trip us up, or catch us on some kind of technicality, all because we use blockchain as an issuance technology. The staff seemed to play ignorant to how it all works, repeating basic questions over and over, as if they were trying to lead us into an answer they wanted. The only real guidance we received on the call was at the very beginning where, in a very awkward moment, the staff made us raise all of our hands and represent that we are not recording the call. After receiving the list of follow-up questions from them after the call, it was fairly obvious that they in fact did record it for their own purposes. The list of follow-up questions was extensive, and beyond appropriate for this type of application. Being clear that FINRA was going to drag this out for possibly years, we decided to put the application on hold until a new administration comes into office.

There is literally no path to registration for a majority of blockchain based asset issuers, and its not for lack of trying or lack of compliance. I can testify, from experience, that the regulators are not acting fairly or in good faith towards this industry. Thankfully, we have enough freedom in the U.S. where I can say this without fear of retaliation, right?

I’m not new to the kinds of tactics that are being employed by regulators towards us, its standard bureaucratic BS that is par for the course in government and similar institutions. I’m also not just some “crypto bro” or “shadowy super coder” as many like to classify us as. After graduating from Columbia University (with two master’s degrees) I took a job with the University to help develop their new $6b+ campus in West Harlem. My daily life was filled with this kind of crap. But what regulators are doing to the blockchain industry is different in the way they are manipulating the free market from developing, its not just day-to-day internal politics as usual. It is a guilty until proven innocent approach to regulating that has governed the financial system for decades.

There is an entire industry of extremely talented individuals joining the effort to build out, what we believe through empirical evidence, is a better financial system for the world. This isn’t a game to us, it isn’t politics. We don’t view the world through borders or arbitrary regulatory barriers that were built a century ago. Many of us left careers in traditional fields to do this. Now, we are leaving the U.S. too.

Money, is the last battle in the fight for freedom. We will not watch silently as you continue to control and manipulate us through it. You do not have this right, despite the office you hold. You do not have the right to tell us what the market needs, and what it doesn’t. This is specifically the kind of overreach that we fought for independence from to start this nation. The capital markets are being suffocated with regulations that do not actually protect anyone other than those with the most money.

Leaving the U.S. is not easy either. I have a family, they love NYC, and schools are great for kids, etc. But I have an obligation to protect all we have built which means seeking a jurisdiction that supports us continuing to build. And we will continue.

These are the people you are pushing out, these are your shadowy super coders. Wake up.