Bitcoin Real Estate Investing

[Anthony Venturini]

With all of the hype and growth the bitcoin has received lately, I am surprised that major real estate players haven't discovered a way to funnel crypto currency into real estate investment deals. I am even more surprised the lack of discussion here about the new currencies. There are a few ICOs that are trying to address this gap (ICOs are IPOs for the crypto world). 

I think bitcoin is proving daily not to be just a fad. It's just a question of how digital currency and brick and mortar are going to merge at this point.

Don't be this guy:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/bitcoin-is-dead/arti...

[Andrew Johnson]

@Jeffrey Holst I have an awfully hard time thinking about Bitcoin or crypto as a way to funnel currency into investment deals.  It's just too chaotic when it comes to price.  If you offer to sell me a property for 10 BTC that's probably based on using the good ol' USD as a proxy for value.  30 days ago BTC was $14K and let's say that the escrow period is 30 days so when we close escrow (today) BTC is $8,800.  If I, as the seller, have to convert that back to cash (USD) to pay off the ol' mortgage I'm stuck with $88K instead of $140K.  D'oh.

It's also one of the issues that I see with some of the real estate ICOs.  You buy their ICO to give you a share of a piece of real estate that isn't purchased yet.  So you have USD -> ETH -> ICO Token -> Future Cash-Flows will be "plannable" but ETH has price swings and those ICO Tokens have price swings.  So I'm trying to use my USD to buy real estate through two currency proxies that both have massive price swings (up and down) and then I have to hope they buy a solid piece of real estate, the ICO isn't a scam, the operators are good, and who knows what happens around reporting income, taxing of that income, etc.  

Good times :-)

Not that I'd never invest in BTC or ETH but I certainly wouldn't try and tie it to some form of ICO Token to be used for real estate acquisition.  

But now I'll put on my sweater vest, New Balance tennis shoes, velcro them up, and go stand outside yelling that kids to stay off my lawn...