As Bitcoin enters the mainstream economy, a number of homebuyers and sellers are starting to use the cryptocurrency to conduct real estate transactions.
Last year, Southeby’s International Realty sold one of the first single-family homes in Austin, Texas using Bitcoin. The Austin home was sold when Bitcoin prices were $3,429 in September 2017.
In addition to these transactions, other residential real estate properties are being listed for Bitcoin. A recent Forbes article describes how Canter Companies, a full-service investment firm specializing in real estate and asset management projects, recently listed two multi-million dollar homes for sale in Bitcoin. The homes are collectively priced at under $20 million in Bitcoin. And recently, a 27 acre piece of land in Silicon Valley has been listed for sale in Bitcoin, Ether and XRP with a starting price of $16 million.
However, while there are a handful of homes currently listed for sale in Bitcoin, some believe that using Bitcoin for real estate transactions will not result in widespread adoption — At least not until the real estate industry starts to utilize blockchain technology, which in turn will drive the adoption of cryptocurrency transactions.
While Bitcoin is stepping into society’s massive adoption as a decentralized cryptocurrency, the next-generation blockchain technology brings a lot more to the real estate world than just a payment alternative. For example, Propy is based on the Ethereum blockchain, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure that can move value around, while also representing the ownership of property. Ultimately, this enables title deed transfers to take place entirely online. Imagine a world where you can buy or sell your property while sitting on your couch – now this is a reality with blockchain technology, Natalia Karayaneva, CEO of Propy, told me.
According to Karayaneva, the only way to encourage homebuyers and sellers to take advantage of cryptocurrency for real estate transactions is to take a “cryptoeconomics” approach, which goes much further than simply putting homes up for sale in Bitcoin.
Cryptoeconomics lays out the framework for the way in which cryptocurrency ecosystems thrive and function across a decentralized network, known as the blockchain. These ecosystems are able to allow a number of entities who do not know one another to reliably reach consensus across an anonymous, trustworthy network through the use of cryptocurrencies. This is achieved by using a combination of economic incentives and basic cryptographic tools.
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