Tangible Launches the Mainnet of its NFT Marketplace backed by Real-world Assets

Tangible, a unique NFT marketplace, launches on May 2, 2022. It converts real-world physical assets like fractionalized/tokenized real estate, gold, investment-grade wine, luxury watches and more into NFTs. Things get even more exciting here, as each NFT can be redeemed against a physical item. Yes, you read that right!

The way Tangible works is users can purchase valuable physical goods using cryptocurrency and mint a TNFT representing that item. This liquid on-chain asset will live in your digital wallet, and the TNFT users can either redeem it for the physical item, transfer it to another wallet, or sell it on Tangible’s marketplace.

While the user will get the TNFT, the physical asset backing the TNFT will be sent to one of the several storage facilities of Tangible that are secure and insured. These facilities are located in London, Singapore, and Zurich. Besides minting NFTs on this platform, Tangible also offers TNFT holders the option of self-fractionalization.

Opting for self-fractionalization has its benefits. For instance, self-fractionalization enables TNFT buyers to recapitalize their investments & recoup some of their costs. It also offers an opportunity for TNFT holders to sell their fractional TNFTs at higher total price, creating profit against their investment.

How does it work?

If you want to purchase a new item from Tangible, you can start by browsing and buying items on its marketplace, where smart contracts process the trading fee, item purchase fee, and storage fee where relevant.

The TNFT is then minted and sent to the user’s wallet for safekeeping, trading, or selling. Meanwhile, Tangible completes the purchase of the physical item from its supplier. After this, the physical item is shipped to a Tangible vault for safekeeping.

If you purchase an item from another user on Tangible’s marketplace, the existing TNFT is transferred to the purchaser’s wallet. As for the physical item, it remains in storage unless the buyer decides to redeem it.

Tangible also has an Instant Liquidity Engine that allows any user to sell a TNFT or a fractionalized TNFT immediately without listing it in the marketplace. Tangible will pay about 10% below market price in its TNGBL token and buy back a TNFT at any time. After this, the Instant Liquidity Pool will list the TNFT on its platform at market price. This price difference will increase the liquidity pool’s $TNGBL supply, increasing the liquidity available. It will ultimately increase the rate of adoption for tokenization of real-world assets.

The Goal

The ultimate goal of Tangible for its TNFT marketplace is to solve the recurring problems present in the market today.

The “alternative” asset classes like art, wine, jewelry, antique cars, real estate, and other collectibles have historically been in high demand as a hedge against inflation and economic instability. However, most of these assets are illiquid, fragmented, and inefficient, limiting their utility and also placing them out of reach for many.

Additionally, most alternative investments can only be purchased using fiat currency, which means crypto investors are forced to leave the crypto ecosystem and diversify their portfolios to invest in these asset classes.

Tangible’s self-fractionalization features allow investors, including smaller ones who do not have the funds to access expensive items like luxury goods or real estate property outright, to purchase a fraction of that asset. Basically, Tangible lowers the barrier to entry on big-ticket investments and allows everyone to have a part of it.

Fractionalization is truly game-changing, especially in terms of real estate. After all, it enables interested investors to buy a fraction of real estate property and benefit from the rental yield, which wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. So, there is no need to qualify for a mortgage loan or have cash to pay for the whole property to benefit from real estate ownership.

The real estate market is worth a whopping $327 trillion, and moving just a fraction of it on-chain will be beneficial not only for Tangible but also for the crypto industry.

While crypto-assets are increasingly gaining mainstream adoption as a store of value, the crypto market is cyclical and volatile.

The Market

For crypto investors, these Tangible assets offer many benefits. For instance, their use as a store of value allows crypto natives to weather the bear market, hedging against surging inflation and protect their wealth. These alternative asset classes are a perfect alternative to stablecoins, earning yield while being insulated from market volatility.

Tangible will cater to both crypto investors & collectors passionate about real-world luxury items. These collectors understand the value in these asset classes, but there is no fluid, immediate marketplace for them to cash out when needed. Further, real-world collectors have to go through the lengthy and cumbersome process of storing their entire collection, finding buyers, and going through a verification process at each step of the way.

Tangible is working on providing a liquid market for these off-chain physical assets, allowing crypto users to buy, sell, and trade them. Overall, Tangible aims to improve liquidity, eliminate fragmented inefficient processes in the alternative investments market and make the complex flow safer and easier.

In a nutshell, Tangible aims to capture the $154 billion collectibles market, which is the estimated annual global trading volume for collectible goods, and bridge it on-chain as redeemable NFTs. By allowing these collectible goods to be openly traded across the globe as NFTs, Tangible believes TNFTs will do to tangible assets what the internet did to retail.

TNGBL Token Structure

On its marketplace, Tangible currently accepts the stablecoin USDC and charges a 2.5% fee on all its transactions, which is in line with industry standards and used by the likes of OpenSea.

However, 100% of this revenue goes to Tangible users through the project’s tokenomics. This revenue is distributed in a way that two-thirds of it is returned directly to locked token holders as USDC distributions while the rest (one-third) is used to buy and burn the project token, TNGBL, to create a positive feedback loop for its price. The maximum supply of TNGBL is 33,333,333.

Tangible’s TNGBL token uses a 3,3+ token model, which was designed & conceptualized by the Tangible team. It rewards holders for locking tokens in Tangible’s protocol for an extended period of time. Basically, the longer you lock your tokens, the higher your multiplier. Additionally, early participants, who are taking on the most risk will receive the most reward, as the highest multipliers will only be available during launch, reducing monthly thereafter.

Each time a new product is minted and sold on the marketplace, a portion of the sale will be used to purchase TNGBL tokens, which are then attached to the TNFT. These tokens are locked for the entire period of the initially-purchased storage, creating an “early user” TNFT, which is only available until the maximum supply is reached. In this way, TNFT holders will benefit from the same revenue sharing as locked token holders.

Locked token positions will release claimable token rewards based on a bonding curve. The closer you are to the end of the locking period, the more tokens will be available to claim. That said, it is also possible to claim unlocked tokens, but for that, holders will have to sacrifice a portion of their multiplier.