The Jacobsons grew up in Canada and Europe, part of a colorful family that has been embroiled in court proceedings that span the globe. A sister’s bitter divorce culminated in a fight over a multimillion-dollar fortune that had been sequestered in the Bahamas, which she won. Their brother-in-law received a suspended prison sentence after he was linked to a group that had been involved in the illegal sale of arms to Angola. When their father, a financier, was asked about the family’s fortune in a 2003 article, the reporter was told, “Don’t ask and I won’t not tell you.”
Rémy and Jean-Marc have said that they carved out their real estate careers by turning over properties in Quebec and parts of the US. Then, in the early 2010s, they discovered bitcoin. Almost immediately, they launched their own bitcoin mining operation, followed by various other companies and a nonprofit. The brothers got entangled in bitcoin-related troubles too—they fell for a Ponzi scheme, and settled with a client that accused their firm of withholding a crypto payment now worth millions.
As early as 2013, as Jean-Marc tells it, the Jacobsons began to consider how to blend their expertise in real estate and crypto. In traditional finance, people could buy into real estate investment trusts (REITs), which let them earn a slice of rental income on a bundle of properties. But that generally meant investing at least a few thousand dollars. The brothers cast about for a way to use crypto to structure a roughly similar product but invest significantly smaller amounts. They didn’t crack it until five years later, when Rémy received a phone call from his lawyer.
Normally, it’s not possible to sell one house to a thousand people. But if the Jacobsons transferred a property’s title to a limited liability company (LLC), they could create and sell crypto tokens that represented shares in the LLC.
The Jacobsons went hunting for a location in which to test their tokenization concept. Detroit, known for its cheap housing stock and ambitions of urban renewal, was an obvious place to look. “Detroit was a city that had just come back from bankruptcy. It was already on the way back up,” says Jean-Marc. “It was a natural choice for potential increase in value. And, mostly, for beautifying and improving neighborhoods.”
They bought their first property—9943 Marlowe, a modest single-family home in West Detroit. In April 2019, they tokenized it, pricing 1,000 tokens at a markup to cover various fees and repairs and a 10 percent cut for the Jacobsons. They also planned to take a 2 percent cut of any future rental income. The rest of the rent would cover maintenance, taxes, and fees, and whatever remained would be distributed among token holders.
On the first day of trading, Jean-Marc tells me, RealT sold fewer than five tokens. The brothers asked their friends and family to buy in and tried to get the word out on X, Medium, and in press interviews. “People were at first suspicious,” says Jean-Marc. “We sold very, very, very little.” After about five months, the Jacobsons considered selling the house, refunding the people who had bought tokens, and walking away.
