.png){kind=small}
Navigating the unknown waters of intellectual property (IP) tokenization is not for the faint-hearted, yet it represents a thrilling frontier for those with the vision to see its potential. The fusion of blockchain technology with IP management is more than a mere innovation; it's a transformative movement reshaping the way we perceive and handle intellectual assets. By leveraging tokenization, we're not just observing the evolution of IP; we're actively participating in its revolutionary reassessment.
Recently, we had the opportunity to speak with Harnis Harmiles, a leading figure in the tokenization space, to gain insights into her journey and her groundbreaking work at Reinvent DAO.
Could you give us a little bit of an introduction about yourself and your foray into the tokenization space?
I have been in Hong Kong for about seven years, though my journey began in Malaysia. Growing up between Malaysia and Australia, I developed a keen interest in technology, which led me to earn a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering. From a young age, I embraced a philosophy of living life fully, always pushing my boundaries and taking calculated risks to foster personal growth.
After university in Sydney, Australia, I embarked on a career in consulting, primarily within the financial services sector. My work involved collaborating with banks, insurance companies, and telecom firms, where I found a passion for enhancing financial education and management. This passion led me to join the Commonwealth Bank, where I took on leadership roles in lending and digital banking.
My career path eventually led me to Hong Kong, where I joined HSBC, a global bank known for its digital banking initiatives. At HSBC, I led teams focused on lending, loyalty rewards, and payment systems, driving the adoption of customer-centric products.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a turning point for me. During the lockdowns, I seized the opportunity to deepen my knowledge in blockchain and DeFi, mentoring startups and engaging in crypto and NFT trading. This period of exploration and growth sparked my interest in the broader applications of blockchain technology.
Recognizing the shift towards a gig economy and the rise of AI, I co-founded Reinvent DAO, a platform that transforms individual know-how into tokenized intellectual property (IP). Our platform serves as a collaborative IP marketplace, enabling users to create, update, and monetize their knowledge. For example, a secret recipe can be turned into a digital kitchen, where licensing it as an NFT allows the creator to earn from its usage.
At Reinvent DAO, we are building a new economy centered on IP tokenization, fostering innovation, and providing opportunities for individuals to capitalize on their expertise in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
So, essentially, you're focused on IPs and tokenizing them?
That's right. IP in a web-free world.
How's the community building going so far?
Well, I would say it was challenging in the beginning because we have to it's a lot of education. Real-world asset requires a lot of education.
Yeah. It requires a lot of education, making people understand the context of how you're putting a representation of an asset on a token and allowing people to see the value that they get. Like, any adoption where innovation happens, any adoption requires a lot of education and a lot of how you find that product market fits. So while we built there's a lot of education that we need to emphasize and educate our leads. So we were doing all every month, we've been doing education just to educate people about what is IP tokenization.
What is that? What is this? And how can we influence the value of this? So from there, we move along. And right now, we have a small community, and we have our MVP one product ready.
So we're solely bringing on board people who have that specific know-how only in emerging tech. So, say you are an AI prompt expert, and you have a specific prompt flow that you wanna tokenize and be able to license it so that other people can use it. So, this is why you bring it onboard to our platform. That's number 1. And number 2, we also look at digital assets.
So, for everyone who's in DeFi, or a specialist in real-world assets, or an institution that has a specific know-how framework, How do you strategize? What other risk management that you can have that you can mitigate? And, also, what is the commercialization angle that you can look at from there? And that's how we bring it all together, tokenize that. So right now, we're in the phase of going to market and bringing onboard our early adopters.
What are the challenges that have come with the work that you do at Reinvent DAO?
It's about how you convince the likes of an average person to understand your model. Right? How do you bring them on board?
Because you're showing them that you are solving their problem. But also because crypto is this only crypto market cap is only 2.3 trillion market cap as compared to the TryFind market cap, which is 500 trillion. So how do you convince the likes of people there or even the likes of people who understand that there's a new asset class introduced?
What we're tokenizing is not just any IP. We're tokenizing the likes of intellectual capital, which is here, 'The know-how'. And we're making it as a form of an IP asset. So this is the way how we're introducing derivatives in the form of an IP.
So in that context, it's a lot about education and saying that, "You know what? What if I'm telling you, you can come on board and you can earn passive income with us? You can earn as people license it. You can see where this money leads you or where your assets can lead you. So from there, if you're producing high-quality assets, you're gonna get more demands, and more people are going to be able to license it from you".
So, a lot of education that we that requires and, of course, convincing regulators as well. A lot of regulations that we need to look into as a real-world asset is not widely jurisdiction-friendly yet. So that's why we need to understand which part of the jurisdiction we need to look into, and that's why my co-founder is a lawyer. So, she's helping from the legal and regulatory structure of how we're gonna do the issuing as well of this.
What's your outlook on the future of the tokenization?
I'm very bullish about it. I believe this is the future, but I also think we are still early. I mean, if you look at the report from BCG that was released last year, the 16 trillion market cap opportunity. Recently, from an IP intellectual property that's available right now, there are about 62 trillion IP or intangible assets available in the S&P 500 companies. So IP is an intangible asset. It's not a tangible asset, meaning it's illiquid.
So, how do you imagine the kind of opportunities that exist here and how the future of the organization is going to introduce a way of how new asset classes, new accessibility, and as well as new ways of how people can invest or secure investment in the way they look into tokenizing their asset. One thing you will have to remember and understand is tokenization is essentially, you provide a representation of the asset on a digital token. And, a token here already exists in today's world. The likes of loyalty points, likes of tokens. If you go to any theme parks, those are tokens that exist.
And, if you think about it in a very simple term, it's like a container. It's a container. You put in, some food or anything in it, and it contains it covers across. These are the contents of the asset that you can bring wherever you go. So, this is what tokenization essentially is.
It gives much more accessibility. And if you look at where institutions are coming in, the likes of all the US banks, or even in Hong Kong, the banks are slowly looking at tangible assets as a tokenization much more on bonds, equities, even the likes of, treasury bills in the US. So, institutional people are coming in. And at the same time, what we're lacking right now is, of course, we're in the early stage, so the liquidity is quite low. But, of course, as things mature and if anyone managed to tackle and crack this by bringing more liquidity into a market that has much more potential, this is where the world's moving towards.
If ever you had a closing remark to convince somebody who hasn't yet jumped on the tokenization trend, what's the one thing you would say?
Well, in today's world, imagine you have a loyalty point. Wherever you travel, say you travel from Lagos to Morocco, you can get loyalty points from your emails. Right? And those types of tokens. But imagine in today's world, those tokens that you earn as loyalty points, you can insert different types of assets that back the token, which means in the likes of gold or even in the likes of any tangible or intangible assets.
What if you can turn in what case we're doing at Reinvent DAO, which is your know-how, you can convert that and trade it as an IP asset, meaning you own it. You're also able to monetize as someone uses it. This is what tokenization gives. It allows you to tokenize a real asset as a representation of it, and you're able to make it more accessible so people can access and buy it trade it, or lease it. At the same time, you can own this as your asset and get and make sure that whatever you own is going to be more accessible and recognizable in today's retail markets.
So, my advice to everyone is, you know, start small. Understand first what tokenization brings. And it's not just about crypto. Tokenization is about real asset-backed assets that you tokenize. So, how can you benefit from there, and how you can utilize this in this world?
There's a massive potential market to tap. Remember, as I said just now, 16 trillion market opportunities in tokenization that have been released by BCG consulting firm last year in a report. And as well, in the world that we're moving towards, everything is online now. You can recognize your self-sovereignty, your data, and how you're able to monetize it. This is why we welcome the world of tokenization and even Web 3.
Link to the full conversation on YouTube below