The tank is getting crowded. Usually, it’s a parade of direct-to-consumer snacks and overpriced athleisure, but lately, the sharks are being asked to bite into something much grittier: the dream of being a landlord without actually owning a building.

Enter PropFTX. It’s a name that, in a post-SBF world, sounds less like a financial revolution and more like a recurring nightmare. The pitch is one we’ve heard a dozen times in the last three years. They want to democratize real estate. They want to fractionalize the skyline. They want your neighbor’s aunt to own 0.001% of a commercial office park in Gurugram via a shiny app interface.

Kunal Bahl wasn’t buying the brochure.

Bahl, the Snapdeal founder turned venture capitalist, has seen this movie before. He’s the guy who watched the Indian e-commerce gold rush turn into a mud-wrestling match. He’s survived the pivot, the burn, and the eventual stabilization. So, when PropFTX stepped onto the carpet, he didn't look at the UI. He looked at the plumbing. And the plumbing, as it turns out, is mostly hopes and dreams.

The friction wasn't subtle. Bahl zeroed in on the "trust factor." In India, real estate isn't just an asset class; it’s a national obsession built on a foundation of skepticism. People don't trust developers. They don't trust brokers. They barely trust the government to keep the land records straight. Now, here comes a startup asking people to send money into the ether for a digital slice of a brick-and-mortar pie.

"Who owns the trust?" Bahl pushed. It’s a brutal question. If the building leaks, if the tenant flees, or if the legal title gets tangled in a decade-long court battle, who does the retail investor call? An algorithm? A 24-year-old founder with a sleek pitch deck? Bahl’s point was simple: you can’t tokenize trust. You can’t put a "verified" badge on an asset class that is historically opaque and often riddled with black money.

Then came the revenue model. This is where most "disruptive" fintech startups start to sweat. PropFTX isn't just a platform; it’s a middleman. And middlemen in the real estate world are usually called brokers. Brokers get a commission and they leave. But PropFTX wants to be an ecosystem. Bahl’s skepticism here was palpable. The margins in fractional real estate are razor-thin once you account for the legal overhead, the compliance costs, and the sheer grit required to manage physical properties.

The founders talked about scale. They talked about the massive untapped market of middle-class investors. Bahl talked about the math. If you’re taking a tiny slice of a tiny slice, your volume has to be astronomical to keep the lights on. And in a high-interest-rate environment where "safe" government bonds are looking pretty attractive, why would anyone gamble on a fractionalized office park through a startup that might not exist in thirty-six months?

It’s the classic Silicon Valley-meets-Mumbai clash. The founders are selling a future where every asset is liquid and every citizen is a portfolio manager. Bahl is living in a present where a single bad title deed can wipe out a decade of gains. He didn't just question their spreadsheets; he questioned their right to exist in a space that demands more than just a slick API.

The "FTX" suffix in the brand name didn't help. Even if it’s meant to stand for "Fractional Trade Exchange," it carries the stench of the greatest financial rug-pull in recent history. It’s a branding choice that suggests a fundamental disconnect from the very "trust" they claim to be building. It’s like naming a new cruise line the Titanic II and being surprised when people ask about the lifeboats.

The segment ended as these things usually do—with a lot of talk about "vision" and "disruption" while the seasoned investors look for the exit. Bahl wasn't looking for a "transformative" story. He was looking for a business that wouldn't collapse the moment the regulatory wind changed direction.

In the end, PropFTX is trying to solve a real problem: real estate is too expensive for most people. But Bahl’s interrogation highlighted a deeper truth that the tech world hates to admit. Some things aren't broken because they lack tech; they’re broken because they’re hard. Putting a digital wrapper on a messy, physical industry doesn't make it better. It just makes the mess harder to see until it’s too late.

Is a digital deed really worth the paper it’s not printed on?