A $24 million mansion is going on sale in London — but you can only pay in bitcoin
An £18 million ($23.9 million) mansion is going on sale this month that can only be purchased in bitcoin.
The property, located near Portobello Road in the upmarket Notting Hill district of London, will only accept the digital currency as payment.
The price tag equates to over 4,000 bitcoin at Friday's price.
Lev Loginov, co-founder of property investment company London Wall, which bought the property in 2013, is hoping paying for property in bitcoin could be the future.
"In 10 years from now cryptocurrencies will take over. It will be in wide use just like debit cards and credit cards," Loginov told CNBC in a phone interview on Friday.
He said that the company has a pipeline of properties that will go on the market and only be available to buy in bitcoin.
Loginov's broader thought is that property ownership records can be transformed with blockchain technology. This is the technology that underpins bitcoin. It is a distributed ledger of activity that can't be tampered with.
Using blockchain technology, ownership records could be stored so they can easily be accessed and they are tamper proof.
"It will have to be a specialist blockchain for property. It will have to be able to demonstrate ownership," Loginov said.
The co-founder of London Wall admitted this was in its experimental stage and it was trying to work out the details of the sale. For example, the tax on the property that will be paid to the government after the sale could be a couple of million pounds. The company will need to figure out how to pay this to the U.K. tax office.
Loginov has hired a business intelligence firm Quintel and barrister James Ramsden QC, to ensure that the money is coming from legitimate sources.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/13/london-mansion-on-sale-bitcoin.html