When a Texas-based real estate brokerage firm sold a property using just Bitcoin, the ease of transaction became topical.
"In a matter of 10 minutes," says Sheryl Lowe, the agent who represented the buyer in the sale, "the Bitcoin was changed to US Dollars and the deal was done!"
The same factor is playing out again. Handlers of the sale of a historic palace in the Spanish resort town of Ibiza are banking on the ease of Bitcoin to put the property on the market.
El Palacio Badarji is on sale for 1,850 Bitcoin. No cash equivalent indicated. The location which was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1999 is an 18th-century palace built in 1740.
It's been renovated in the last few years. Yet, its four en-suite bedrooms, a master suite with private lounge room and a living room with reception area as well as other parts are intact.
Ease of use
The ease of use is a major factor that would continue to cause leading real estate brokerage to look keenly in the digital currency's direction. This is considering the hassles that always go with the sales of real estate ownership especially across borders.
Just last month, a mansion in London was put on the market for £17 mln. Its sales notice stated that the potential buyer has to pay in Bitcoin - about 5,050 BTC at the time.
Lev Loginov, who put the property up for sale, talked about transactions in Bitcoin being "...done quicker, more efficiently and it is much easier to deal with than using banks, which are putting in unnecessary over-regulation."
British entrepreneurs, Michelle Mone and Doug Barrowman, also launched a Bitcoin-priced real estate development in Dubai. Mone sees a time when early adopters will give way to a more mainstream application of cryptocurrencies. Hence, "... it's a logical extension to take land and buildings and effectively offer people the opportunity to pay in cryptocurrency or bitcoin rather than just fiat currency."
Some of the other Blockchain-backed projects with interests in the real estate market include Propy, Atlant and Brickblock. Propy's decentralized title registry platform was recently used in the sale of an apartment in Ukraine, while Brickblock plans to offer the world’s first tokenized real estate project – an apartment block in Berlin going on sale in December.