The Bros.. Cardone: Grant and Gary.

In February 2026, Scientologist Grant Cardone announced plans to tokenize his firm’s $5 billion real estate portfolio — the largest single-entity real estate tokenization ever announced. The announcement was presented as bold financial innovation. The SEC filings tell a different story. So does a careful look at who stands to profit from the infrastructure that tokenization would require, and that person is Grant Cardone and his twin brother Gary, the principal investor behind NODE40, a digital asset compliance platform designed to serve exactly the kind of institutional tokenization program Grant is now promoting. Gary Cardone was also the seed money investor for Grant’s companyCardone Capital LLC.

I. We Predicted the Debt Wall. The Wall Has Arrived 

In April 2020, we ran the amortization schedules on Grant Cardone’s self-described loan structure — ten-year loans with five years of interest-only payments — and calculated what would happen when principal and interest came due. We wrote: In October 2025, Cardone’s yearly interest-only payments jump from $54 million to $119 million. In 2026, Cardone’s annual principal and interest payment screams up to $316.2 million. This is $26.3 million per month.

It is now March 2026. The debt wall has arrived. And the behavior of the Cardone brothers over the past sixteen months tells us everything we need to know about how that question has answered itself.

Cardone Capital now claims $5.1 billion in assets under management across 14,200 apartment units and 500,000 square feet of commercial office space. We do not know the current leverage ratio with precision. But Cardone has consistently used leverage of 75–82% of acquisition price, as disclosed in the REIT’s own SEC filings. At a conservative 75% leverage on $5.1 billion, Cardone’s debt load is approximately $3.825 billion. The loans taken out during the 2020–2022 period — when interest rates were near zero — are ballooning now.

II. What the SEC Filings Actually Show

Cardone REIT I, LLC — Form 1-K for Year Ended December 31, 2024

Cardone REIT I, LLC is the vehicle Grant Cardone publicly mocked in 2019 before launching his own version in 2022. The corrected annual report for year ended December 31, 2024, audited by Kaufman, Rossin & Co., P.A. of Miami, reveals the following:

Accumulated deficit: $(38,793,720) as of December 31, 2024 — up from $(25,293,952) at December 31, 2023. The accumulated deficit grew by $13.5 million in twelve months.

Total assets: Declining. $38,472,374 at December 31, 2024, down significantly from prior periods.

Members’ equity: $21,763,952, eroding rapidly as losses mount and distributions continue to be paid.

Fundraising: The fund is essentially maxed out. As of December 31, 2024, approximately 75,936 Class A units had been issued against a $75 million target. Only roughly 1,000 new units were sold in the preceding twelve months — $1 million raised in a year against a $75 million target. The money spigot is closed.

Debt structure: Five of eight SPEs carry non-recourse debt ranging from 62% to 80% of acquisition cost. Four variable-rate loans — all exercised their first one-year extensions as of November 2025. They are rolling short-term debt because they cannot refinance at tolerable rates. One loan was refinanced in August 2025 to a five-year fixed rate at 5.70%. The remaining variable-rate loans carry rates ranging from approximately 6.36% to 8.79%, inclusive of spread.

The auditor’s going concern language: The independent auditor, Kaufman Rossin, included language in its audit opinion evaluating whether conditions or events raise substantial doubt about Cardone REIT I, LLC’s ability to continue as a going concern within one year after the date of the financial statements. This is the standard going concern evaluation paragraph. Its inclusion does not constitute a going concern qualification, but its presence reflects the auditor’s obligation to consider the issue given the entity’s financial profile.

The Self-Dealing Architecture — Unchanged

The 1-K confirms that the self-dealing cycle we first documented in 2020 remains fully intact:

Grant Cardone’s personal investment: $25,000 (25 Class A units), representing 0.033% of a $75 million fund.

Class B units: 1,000 units issued to the Manager for no consideration — zero dollars. These are the only voting units.

Acquisition fees: $8,892,500 total capitalized; the Company’s proportional share is $1,808,330.

Asset management fees: $368,982 in H1 2025; $808,880 remains unpaid and accruing as of December 31, 2024 — the Manager is deferring its own fees, which is simultaneously a sign of cash stress and a growing related-party liability.

Pre-fund loans from Grant Cardone: $16,726,119 aggregate, at 0% interest, now repaid. This is the documented cycle: Grant buys property with his own money, sells it to his captive fund, and the fund repays Grant. This technique reduces Grant Cardone’s debt exposure to zero and transfers all financial risks onto the fund. Grant Cardone is made whole, enriched by acquisition fees, and uses the loan money he was repaid by the fund to repeat the cycle and launch a new fund.

Manager advance: $2,948,940 advanced to one Cardone Member LLC in December 2024, non-interest bearing, still outstanding as of December 31, 2024.

Expense advance loan from affiliate: An affiliate of the Company’s Manager made loans aggregating to approximately $13,918,000 at 4% interest to cover interest rate cap extensions required by the underlying lenders. The Manager’s affiliate is now lending to the SPEs.

An SPE — Special Purpose Entity — defined:

Like Cardone Capital, Scientology can be viewed as nothing more than a series of Special Purpose Entities designed to reduce legal and financial risks as close to zero as possible by use of binding arbitration contracts, NDA’s, and paying off former SO execs who pose high risks due to what they know.

One common pattern runs through every Cardone fund structure: Grant Cardone contributes $25,000 of his own money, receives 1,000 free voting units giving him sole control, collects acquisition fees, asset management fees, and disposition fees, and takes 30–35% of profits upon sale — all while investors bear the debt and the risk. 

The NOYACK Assessment — Confirmed

The independent NOYACK assessment (updated July 2025) rated Cardone REIT I a score of 0.5 out of 5 — ‘Avoid completely’ — and estimated that a $10,000 investment had declined to $7,047, representing approximately -11% annualized since inception. The SEC filings support this assessment. The accumulated deficit exceeds members’ equity. The fund cannot raise new capital. Its underlying properties are financed with variable-rate debt that has been rolled on short-term extensions because long-term refinancing at tolerable rates is unavailable.

Cardone REIT I, LLC — Form 1-SA, Period Ending June 30, 2025

The semi-annual report for the period ending June 30, 2025, shows the trajectory continuing to worsen:

Net loss H1 2025: ~$1,895,061.

Total assets: ~$31,054,969 at June 30, 2025, down from $38,472,374 at December 31, 2024. The fund is shrinking.

Accumulated deficit: $(38,793,720) at June 30, 2025, versus $(25,293,952) at December 31, 2023. The hole deepens.

Distributions payable: $577,097 at June 30, 2025 — distributions still being paid while the fund loses money. Investors are receiving distributions financed by investor capital, not investment returns.

The pattern we identified in 2020 has now produced its predictable result. The fund raises no new capital. The debt is rolling on short-term extensions. The accumulated losses exceed $38 million on a fund whose total assets are $31 million.

III. The Bitcoin Pivot: Innovation or Desperation?

March 17, 2026: “I love real estate,” Cardone told Fox Business (3). “But I don’t like that real estate is very heavy, it’s very slow to move, and it’s very expensive to fix.”

In December 2024, Cardone Capital launched what it called ‘Bitcoin-Real Estate Hybrid Funds.’ There are currently three:

The 10X Space Coast Bitcoin Fund: $87.5 million total — $72.5 million for a 300-unit multifamily property in Melbourne, Florida, plus $15 million in Bitcoin. Minimum investment $250,000.

The 10X Boca Raton Bitcoin Fund: $235 million for 366 apartment units acquired from a Blackstone-related bankruptcy at 101 Via Mizner in Boca Raton, plus $100 million in Bitcoin.

The 10X Miami River Fund: 346 apartments on the Miami River combined with additional Bitcoin allocation.

Cardone announced in late 2024 that his funds added $72 million in Bitcoin in October and November alone. He stated a target of 4,000 BTC and placed the Bitcoin logo on his $70 million private jet.

By our calculation from February 2026, Cardone Capital had accumulated approximately 2,814 BTC at a blended cost of roughly $99,000 per coin, representing approximately $279 million in Bitcoin purchases using investor money. When Bitcoin crashed below $70,000 in early February 2026, Cardone was sitting on approximately $101 million in unrealized losses on that position.

The Bitcoin is not a hedge. It is a liquidity bridge. For a syndicator facing a debt wall with $26.3 million in monthly principal and interest obligations, having a liquid asset on the books creates options that illiquid apartment buildings do not.

The Boca Raton Deal: What the Bankruptcy Filings Show

Cardone’s Boca Raton acquisition — widely presented as a bargain purchase from a distressed seller — was analyzed in detail by LRL Financial in a highly sophisticated August 2025 deep dive. The findings undercut the narrative. IRL unpacked the deal and showed the financials.

Grant Cardone’s Boca Raton deal is, based on our analysis, an extremely high risk play that allowed Grant Cardone to pick up $100 million in Bitcoin right now based on his pure hopium that BTC will go to $1 million in 2027 as his brother Gary Cardone has predicted. Grant bet the house on this deal.

An interesting Polymarket play presents itself: Will Grant Cardone sell or pledge as collateral any of Cardone Capital’s Bitcoin in 2026 to service debt or fund operations for Cardone Capital and its holdings?

The Boca Raton property was owned by Penn Florida Companies, whose affiliate Blackstone held a $195 million loan maturing December 2024. Penn Florida could not refinance because the property’s annualized net operating income was only $8.3 million — a 3.5% cap rate on the $235 million purchase price. The NOI could not support anywhere near $195 million in new debt.

When Penn Florida defaulted, Blackstone initiated a UCC foreclosure on the equity interests of the owning entity. Penn Florida responded by filing Chapter 11 in January 2025. Cardone emerged as the stalking horse bidder at $230 million. The only other serious bidder, Crescent Heights — one of the most experienced South Florida developers — bid $236.5 million but withdrew after requesting more time to study the condo conversion process. Crescent Heights walking away from this deal is telling.

Cardone bumped his bid to $235 million. Arbor Realty provided a $155 million bridge loan on a three-year term, requiring a $15 million paydown to close. LRL Financial’s analysis shows the deal is cash-flow negative from day one. Even on pro forma 95% occupancy numbers, the unlevered yield on cost reaches only 4.4% — well below the borrowing cost. LRL estimates debt service coverage at just 1.05x even on optimistic assumptions.

The only viable exit path is a condo conversion — selling 366 individual units into a Boca Raton luxury condo market where inventory was up 50% year-over-year through June 2025 and days-on-market exceeded 300 days for high-end units. LRL’s base case puts pricing at $850/SF versus CBRE’s $1,250/SF estimate in a July 2025 valuation commissioned by the parties. As LRL concluded: buying a distressed asset does not always equate to acquiring it at a favorable basis.

Cardone formed a joint venture — Mizner 366 JV LLC — in which Cardone holds 92.6% and Penn Florida retains 7.4%. Penn Florida did not contribute new cash. Critically, the operating agreement gives Cardone a call option on Penn Florida’s interest in the Bitcoin allocation at cost basis. Cardone takes all the Bitcoin upside. Penn Florida and Cardone’s investors bear the downside.

IV. The Ninth Circuit Has Weighed In

On June 10, 2025, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion in Pino v. Cardone Capital, LLC, No. 23-3512, reversing the district court’s dismissal of the class action brought by the late Luis Pino’s daughter Christine Pino, represented by Susman Godfrey LLP.

Judge Margaret McKeown wrote that Cardone’s reaction to a prior SEC comment letter — removing the 15% IRR projections from his offering circulars without rebuttal or comment — was evidence that Cardone himself did not believe the projections he was making to investors. The Ninth Circuit found that Pino had adequately alleged both subjective and objective falsity. It found that Cardone’s projections lacked a reasonable basis. It found that no prior funds had performed to the projected level. And it found that Cardone’s failure to disclose the SEC letter to investors was a material omission.

The Exact Exchange That Created Landmark Securities Law

The SEC comment and Cardone’s response are now part of the public record, cited in the Barnes and Thornburg legal alert. The SEC wrote:

“We note your disclosure on page 17 and throughout the offering statement that references your strategy to pay a monthly distribution to investors that will result in a return of approximately 15% annualized return on investment. We further note you have commenced only limited operations, have not paid any distributions to date and do not appear to have a basis for such return. Please revise to remove this disclosure throughout the offering statement.”

Cardone’s entire response, in full:

“We have removed the references on pages 17, 26, and 32.”

That is the totality of it. No rebuttal. No assertion of a factual basis. No defense of the projections. Eleven words acknowledging page numbers. This is the moment the Ninth Circuit found to be evidence of subjective falsity — that Cardone removed the projections without argument because he had no argument to make. And he kept making the same projections to investors on social media after silently removing them from the SEC filing.

The case is now back in district court and proceeding toward trial. Cardone is represented by King and Spalding LLP, one of the most expensive defense firms in the United States.

The Ninth Circuit’s reasoning has already entered the broader securities law conversation. In a June 2025 legal alert, the national law firm Barnes and Thornburg LLP analyzed Pino v. Cardone Capital not as a Cardone-specific problem, but as a precedent-setting opinion with implications for every public company that receives an SEC comment letter. The firm explicitly framed the situation as ‘the plaintiff using the SEC review process as a sword’ — the inverse of the traditional Tandy representation that previously required companies to acknowledge they could not use the review process as a shield. Barnes and Thornburg is now advising its entire client base to add preemptive disclaimer language to SEC response letters stating that compliance with a comment should not be construed as the company’s agreement with it.

When a major law firm tells its entire client base to change how they respond to the SEC because of your case, you are no longer dealing with a nuisance lawsuit. Pino v. Cardone Capital is being treated as landmark securities law.

The Forward-Looking Risk: The Same Pattern, Now With a Legal Blueprint

Here is what makes the Ninth Circuit ruling acutely dangerous for Grant Cardone today, in March 2026.

Cardone is currently promoting 35% annual returns on the Bitcoin-real estate hybrid funds — on Fox Business, on X, and in direct investor communications — after a federal appellate court has found that his 15% IRR projections for prior funds lacked a reasonable basis and that he likely did not believe them himself. He is repeating the identical behavioral pattern — social media return promises that exceed what can be supported by actual fund performance — that the Ninth Circuit has now provided plaintiff’s attorneys a roadmap to challenge.

Any attorney representing future Bitcoin fund investors who lose money now has a framework: find the SEC correspondence for the hybrid funds, look for any comment letter addressing the 35% return projections, and document whether Cardone pushed back or silently complied. If the SEC has sent any comment letter about those projections and Cardone removed them without rebuttal — the Pino framework applies directly.

Grant Cardone’s behavior on social media following the Bitcoin crash is consistent with a man who is scared. A man who confidently believed his own projections would not need to flood his channels with reassurance. The volume and urgency of the promotion is the tell. Cardone has also stated that he needs to raise more money.

V. The Tokenization Announcement: Innovation or the Next Pivot?

On February 26, 2026 — twenty-one days after Bitcoin crashed below $70,000 and we documented approximately $101 million in Cardone investor losses — Grant Cardone announced via an X post that Cardone Capital plans to tokenize its entire $5 billion real estate portfolio. He said the firm wants to give investors ‘collateral and liquidity in the secondary markets’ and aims to become ‘the market leader tokenizing assets at scale.’0

The announcement has been covered as a major digital asset story. Let us read it differently.

The sequence: Debt wall arrives. Bitcoin pivot fails. Fundraising collapsed. Ninth Circuit ruling creates securities law precedent against Cardone. Tokenization announced. The timing is not coincidental.

The specifics: No blockchain partner named. No timeline firmer than ‘mid-2026.’ No disclosed related-party relationships. Cardone publicly solicited blockchain partnerships from Solana, Polygon, and Avalanche via X, treating a major financial infrastructure decision as a social media poll.

The regulatory structure: The firm plans to use Regulation D (for U.S. accredited investors) and Regulation S (for international participants). The Reg S component is structurally significant: it opens cross-border capital formation to non-U.S. investors who may have no knowledge of Cardone’s SEC history, the Pino class action, or the performance of his prior funds.

The liquidity promise: Cardone promises investors ‘collateral and liquidity in the secondary markets.’ Real estate tokenization has been announced by major players for years with minimal actual secondary market liquidity materializing. Deloitte forecasts $4 trillion in tokenized real estate by 2035 — a ten-year projection. The market today is a fraction of that.

This is the Cardone self-dealing cycle, version 3.0. The structure is identical to prior funds. The new marketing hook is tokenization rather than Bitcoin-real estate hybrids. And the investors who will bear the downside are the ones who do not read the fine print.

VI. Gary Cardone and NODE40: The Infrastructure Play

Readers of this blog know we have covered Gary Cardone extensively. He is Grant’s twin brother. He made his initial fortune in European energy markets — particularly UK pipeline operations. In our long experience covering the Cardone brothers, we have always considered Gary to be the financial architect and Grant to be the showman.

In 2022, Gary’s family office, Card1Ventures LLC, led NODE40’s Series Seed Round with a $4 million investment. The announcement stated that Card1Ventures was ‘actively facilitating strategic partnerships’ and that Gary would lend ‘expertise from the financial services sector.’ Gary subsequently doubled down with an additional $8 million investment, bringing his total to $12 million, as NODE40 targets a Series A.

Gary Cardone currently serves as Chairman of the Board at NODE40. His self-description is ‘Lifelong Entrepreneur — CardoneDigitalVentures — NODE40 — Bitcoin — Blockchain — AI.’

What NODE40 Does

NODE40 is a digital asset accounting and compliance platform. Its flagship product converts complex blockchain transaction data into structured, audit-ready financial reporting. Its stated institutional client targets include Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, and Ernst and Young.

In March 2026 — six days after Grant’s tokenization announcement — NODE40 published a white paper titled ‘MCP Servers in Agentic Reporting: Control Boundaries for Digital-Asset Financial Reporting.‘ The paper describes NODE40’s implementation of Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol to allow AI agents to query NODE40’s compliance infrastructure through governed, permissioned interfaces.

The white paper explicitly addresses IRS final broker reporting regulations (Form 1099-DA) and FASB ASU 2023-08 fair value measurement requirements — exactly the compliance infrastructure you need when you tokenize a $5 billion real estate portfolio and create thousands of token holders with reportable tax events.

The Related-Party Question

Gary Cardone’s LinkedIn profile shows he was an investor at Cardone Capital from 2002 to present, and co-owner of Cardone Real Estate Holdings, LLC from 2008 to 2014. He was, by his own description, the seed money behind Cardone Capital.

We reviewed the SEC filings for Cardone REIT I, LLC — the 1-K for year ended December 31, 2024, and the 1-SA for the period ending June 30, 2025 — for any reference to Gary Cardone, Card1Ventures, NODE40, or any digital asset compliance vendor.

Finding: There is no reference to Gary Cardone, Card1Ventures, NODE40, or any digital asset reporting service in the related-party disclosures of either the 1-K or the 1-SA.

This finding is significant in two directions. First, the Bitcoin hybrid funds are structured as Reg D private offerings, not Reg A+ public offerings like the REIT — meaning their related-party disclosures appear only in Form D filings, not in the REIT’s SEC filings. Second, the period covered by these filings ends December 31, 2024, and June 30, 2025, respectively — before the tokenization announcement of February 26, 2026.

The Form D filings for the three Bitcoin hybrid funds — the 10X Space Coast Bitcoin Fund, 10X Boca Raton Bitcoin Fund, and 10X Miami River Fund — are the documents that will either confirm or rule out a related-party vendor relationship with NODE40. Those filings remain a priority research target.

The Business Logic of the Brothers

Consider the architecture from Gary’s perspective. Gary holds a substantial position in NODE40, which provides compliance and reporting infrastructure for institutional digital asset operations. Gary also holds an investor position in Cardone Capital dating to 2002. Gary publicly predicted in July 2025 that Bitcoin would reach $1 million by 2027 — a prediction that influenced, or at minimum aligned with, Grant’s decision to place approximately $279 million of investor money into Bitcoin.

Now Grant announces the largest single-entity real estate tokenization in history. A $5 billion portfolio tokenized across tens of thousands of token holders will generate an enormous and continuous volume of on-chain transactions, each requiring cost-basis tracking, IRS 1099-DA reporting, and FASB fair value accounting. NODE40 is purpose-built for exactly this function.

This does not establish that NODE40 has been engaged as a vendor. It establishes that the business logic for such an engagement is compelling, that the relationship between the brothers creates the potential for an undisclosed related-party arrangement, and that investors in any Cardone tokenization offering deserve to know whether the compliance infrastructure for their investment is operated by the founder’s twin brother.

VII. Gary Cardone’s Regulatory Background

Before Gary Cardone became the architect of NODE40’s compliance-and-reporting play, he was the co-founder and CEO of Chargebacks911, a Clearwater, Florida-based fraud mitigation company. Chargebacks911 was the subject of a Federal Trade Commission action and a State of Florida action concerning the company’s business practices.

The FTC and Florida Attorney General alleged that Chargebacks911 submitted misleading and altered documents to banks to dispute valid consumer chargebacks, ran millions of deceptive microtransactions from 2013 to 2019 to artificially suppress merchant chargeback rates, and ignored obvious red flags about client misconduct. The 2023 settlement with regulators, while not an admission of guilt, slapped Gary Cardone and Monica Eaton with a permanent injunction barring ties to high-risk clients and demanding transparency in future dealings. The civil penalty was $150,000 — widely regarded as inadequate relative to the scale of the alleged conduct.

That FTC settlement was not the end of Gary Cardone’s legal exposure. It was the predicate for something larger.

The RICO Class Action and the $12.5 Million Settlement

On June 28, 2023, plaintiffs Janet Sihler and Charlene Bavencoff filed a civil RICO class action against Gary Cardone, Monica Eaton, and Global E-Trading LLC (doing business as Chargebacks911) in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Case No. 8:23-CV-01450. The complaint alleged that Chargebacks911 orchestrated a sprawling fraudulent scheme, systematically manipulating documentation to make it appear consumers had consented to charges when they had not, submitting misleading and altered documents to financial institutions to dispute valid consumer chargebacks, and running millions of deceptive microtransactions to artificially suppress merchant chargeback rates.

The complaint named Gary Cardone personally, alleging that as CEO he was intimately involved in the company’s operations and liaised directly with fraudulent merchant clients. The complaint notes he stepped down from the CEO role shortly after the FTC complaint was filed — a timeline that is itself notable.

Under RICO, defendants found liable face treble damages — triple the actual financial harm. With the class certified on August 13, 2024, and damages potentially exceeding $70 million before trebling, the financial exposure was enormous.

In early 2025, a federal court ordered Microsoft to produce Gary Cardone’s Skype communications over Microsoft’s objection — a discovery victory for plaintiffs that suggested the communications contained significant evidentiary material. The case was heading to trial with motions in limine resolved in June 2025 when the parties settled.

The settlement: In December 2025, Sihler v. Global E-Trading, LLC settled for $12.5 million. The final approval hearing was held December 2, 2025. The case was terminated December 3, 2025. The settlement is not an admission of guilt.

The timing is striking. Gary Cardone settled a $12.5 million RICO class action in December 2025. Two months later, Grant Cardone announced the largest single-entity real estate tokenization in history, with Gary’s NODE40 platform positioned as the logical compliance infrastructure for exactly that kind of institutional digital asset operation.

Gary has since exited operational control of Chargebacks911. His former wife Monica Eaton now serves as CEO. Whether Gary retains a passive investment interest is unknown to us at this time.

The Clearwater geography is worth noting. Gary Cardone built his initial fortune and his Chargebacks911 operation at 5765 Highway 19N in Clearwater — the same city that serves as Scientology’s spiritual and operational headquarters, and the same city that is the subject of our ongoing investigation into Scientology-connected real estate straw-buyer networks and the Project Normandy financial infrastructure.

VIII. OT8 Grant Cardone: When Scientology’s ‘Technology’ Meets the Market

Grant Cardone is a Scientology OT8 — the highest publicly available level of Scientology’s ‘Bridge to Total Freedom.’ Gary Cardone is also a Scientology OT8. Both brothers have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in Scientology services.

Grant Cardone has repeatedly invoked the language of Scientology’s OT certainty in his investment pitches, describing himself as ‘Nostradamus’ who can predict the future, and promoting his Bitcoin position with what amounts to an OT’s claimed ability to ‘postulate’ reality into existence.

Bitcoin does not care about Cardone’s OT certainty. Bitcoin crashed 40% in four months from its October 2025 peak near $126,000. At the February 2026 low, Cardone’s investors were sitting on approximately $101 million in unrealized losses.

Scientology’s OT levels do not work. They do not give practitioners supernatural powers. They do not allow anyone to predict or control financial markets. They are an elaborate and expensive fraud. Grant Cardone’s Bitcoin implosion is the latest demonstration.

Gary Cardone, also OT8, publicly predicted Bitcoin would reach $1 million by 2027. That prediction was the likely intellectual foundation for his twin brother’s decision to place hundreds of millions of investor dollars into Bitcoin at prices ranging from $82,500 to $108,000 per coin.

IX. What We Think Grant Cardone’s Tokenization Announcement Actually Is

Pulling the full picture together — the debt wall, the Bitcoin implosion, the fundraising collapse, the Ninth Circuit ruling, the NODE40 infrastructure, and the family architecture:

Grant is $101 million underwater on Bitcoin purchased with investor money. He is facing approximately $26.3 million in monthly principal and interest obligations. His fundraising from traditional Reg A investors has collapsed by 65–81% per his own SEC filings. The REIT is losing millions. A live securities class action is establishing precedent that his prior return projections lacked a reasonable basis.

He announces a $5 billion tokenization — with no named blockchain partner, no firm timeline, and no disclosed related-party relationships — that would open a new cross-border capital formation channel via Regulation S, create thousands of new investors who may not be familiar with his history of self-dealing, class action litigation, and SEC problems, and generate an enormous volume of on-chain transactions that would flow through compliance infrastructure that may be operated by his brother.

This is not financial innovation. This is what a heavily leveraged real estate syndicator does when his existing investor base is tapped out, his Bitcoin bet has cratered, and he needs new money from a new audience.

The pattern is consistent across every iteration of the Cardone fundraising machine. Grant promotes on social media with promises of extraordinary returns. The actual SEC filings — buried in EDGAR — tell a story of self-dealing, losses, and deferred fees. Investors who discover the discrepancy are directed to fine print that was always there.

The tokenization announcement adds one new dimension: the potential that the compliance infrastructure for Grant’s next major fundraise is owned by his brother. That is a related-party arrangement that belongs in an SEC filing, not concealed behind an X post.

X. What to Watch For Next

The Form D filings for the Bitcoin hybrid funds. These are the documents that show whether NODE40 or any Card1Ventures entity is disclosed as a related party or service vendor. They are filed within 15 days of the first sale of securities under Regulation D. If they have not been filed, that is itself a disclosure issue.

The 1-K for Cardone REIT I for year ended December 31, 2025. Due by approximately April 2026. This will contain the auditor’s assessment of going concern risk and will show whether the Bitcoin losses hit the REIT’s financial statements. The auditor will be making the going concern determination for this filing.

The Pino v. Cardone Capital district court proceedings. The case is back in district court following the Ninth Circuit’s August 2025 decision. Discovery, depositions, and any motion for summary judgment will shed further light on Cardone’s internal projections and his awareness of their unreliability.

Any named blockchain partner for the tokenization. Cardone has not named a partner. When he does, the related-party analysis must be applied to that entity as well.

NODE40’s client disclosures. Whether Cardone Capital appears in any NODE40 client materials, case studies, or regulatory filings.

Gary Cardone’s current ownership interest in Cardone Capital. His LinkedIn shows investor status from 2002 to present. The nature and quantum of that interest in current fund structures requires examination.

XI. The Bottom Line

We have watched Grant Cardone since he emerged on social media nearly a decade ago. Our read of him now is that he would trade all of his real estate holdings and debt for Bitcoin if he could. Gary Cardone has said as much explicitly: in a video he described the overhead of a traditional business and compared it unfavorably to crypto, which ‘you just buy and hold.’

The tokenization announcement is the synthesis of both brothers’ ambitions: Grant’s need for new capital from new audiences, and Gary’s need for institutional adoption of digital assets to drive NODE40’s growth. The interests align perfectly. Whether they align in a way that has been properly disclosed to investors is the question that remains to be answered.

In our opinion, anyone considering an investment in any Cardone Capital fund — tokenized or otherwise — should read the actual SEC filings rather than watching Grant Cardone’s social media videos. The disclosures buried in those filings tell a very different story than the one Cardone tells on Instagram and Fox Business.

The debt wall we predicted in 2020 has arrived. The Bitcoin pivot has cratered. The tokenization announcement is the next unusual solution to a problem that the self-dealing cycle created. As L. Ron Hubbard noted, unusual solutions are not a good thing.

Stay tuned.

Sources and Methodology

Primary sources: SEC EDGAR filings for Cardone REIT I, LLC (CIK 0001882616), Form 1-K for year ended December 31, 2024 and Form 1-SA for period ended June 30, 2025; SEC EDGAR filings for Cardone Equity Funds 24 and 25; Pino v. Cardone Capital LLC, No. 23-3512 (9th Cir. 2025); Barnes and Thornburg LLP client alert on Pino v. Cardone Capital, National Law Review (June 24, 2025); LRL Financial analysis of 101 Via Mizner (August 2025); NODE40 MCP white paper (March 2026); Gary Cardone LinkedIn and Card1Ventures seed round announcement; NOYACK assessment of Cardone REIT I (July 2025); Sihler et al. v. Global E-Trading LLC, No. 8:23-CV-01450 (M.D. Fla.), settlement agreement and class action notice; CoinDesk reporting on Cardone tokenization (February 26, 2026); prior Scientology Money Project reporting (2020 through 2026). Copyright 2026.

Jeffrey Augustine is an investigative journalist and licensed private investigator based in Los Angeles. He operates the Scientology Money Project (scientologymoneyproject.com) and Augustine Investigative Services.