Category: Blockchain

Milestone in Vermont The Vermont city of South Burlington has become a trendsetter in blockchain deed recording. Looking at the South Burlington test run, we can see that a deed on the blockchain doesn’t look like some futuristic metaverse creation. (Scroll here for a look at the deed.) Instead, it resembles your typical property deed. The…

People with Fidelity 401k or retirement accounts might have noticed a new addition to their home screens: listed among the daily commodity prices is the price of bitcoin. Looks like Fidelity is now poised to allow bitcoin trading in some 34 million individual investor accounts.  Meanwhile, the Bloomberg Crypto Outlook Report points out that bitcoin…

The leading international accounting firm Deloitte has announced a new blockchain report. The firm says blockchain-based smart contracts could “revolutionize” commercial real estate. Deloitte says blockchain will work for leasing and selling real estate. Indeed, Deloitte says the technology is poised to take on 50% of all commercial rentals and sales.

Marc Andreessen is concerned about the state of U.S. housing. (If the name sounds familiar, but you can’t pinpoint it, Andreessen co-founded Netscape, and serves on the board of directors of Meta/Facebook.)   Observing that “our country is creating households faster than we’re building houses,” Andreessen lays out several other issues that point to the…

Mark Masih is a Philadelphia real estate agent and an investor. Masih has been an agent for some time with Compass Realty, selling homes in Philadelphia. Recently, Masih bought a West Philly property, then nicely renovated it. When Masih listed it, the home was described as containing a unique and special “fixture” — a closet…

In El Salvador, people can use bitcoin to buy houses — or most anything that’s sold in the streets, shops, and malls. President Nayib Bukele’s quest to make bitcoin the nation’s legal tender means it’s gradually being phased into the economy through a suite of incentives. The plan is bold. For a nation tethered to…

The National Association of REALTORS® is the largest U.S. real estate trade group. Now, it has a Cryptocurrency Presidential Advisory Group. The reason? To learn and think about crypto in real estate — now, and in the future. Leslie Rouda Smith, president of NAR, wrote in June: I’m excited to tell you that I’ve appointed…

Last summer, Peter Lane Taylor first reported on a story about the Miami Beach penthouse that sold for a stunning $22.5 million worth of cryptocurrency. Taylor wrote: At $4,440.50/SF, the deal broke every previous Miami Beach record for price per square foot. Yet it raised more eyebrows for what it didn’t do: close in American dollars. This…

Here It Comes… Internet-assisted real estate investing keeps evolving, just as the internet itself does. Now, it’s possible to convert stored value — even real estate — into digital assets. Fractional shares in a property become securities, issued as tokenized shares to be traded on a secondary market. These investments and trades are verified and…

If you ask J.P. Morgan, you might be surprised at the answer. At a time when real estate and other private investments are undergoing a valuation reset, a recent J.P. Morgan report highlights cryptocurrency. It says digital currencies have overtaken real estate as a “preferred alternative asset class.” (Alternative assets are investment choices that don’t…

Not Ready for Prime Time in Mortgages, But… Despite the growing pains and the volatility, crypto assets (the good ones, at least) are finding their use cases. Numerous financial and tech giants are offering customers digital asset options, and investing in the sector in various ways. The federal government recently put all hands on deck…

Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Andrew Yang made appearances at the Crypto Bahamas conference this year. The blockchain company FTX, one of the event’s hosts, boasts Tom Brady in an Ambassador role. Co-hosting the event was SALT, the geopolitical thought leadership forum. The Bahamian Prime Minister, Philip Davis, opened the event. Clearly, cryptocurrency is welcome…

Bitcoin hit a $68K+ high in November 2021; it’s just under 40K today. But something is going on with digital assets that should be on everyone’s radar. They are part of the property system in 2022 — in a way they weren’t before.

Spring 2022 Update Cryptocurrency adoption has been on a steady upward trend. So has its blockchain-based technology. The blockchain is a database that preserves indelible records. Each block in the chain contains proof of individual claims and transactions that have happened or that will happen in the future.

A First for U.S. Real Estate This year, the California real estate tech company Propy directed the first U.S. real estate NFT auction. The asset was a four-bedroom, 2-and-a-half bath house in Gulfport, on the western coast of central Florida. The Spanish-style building looks like many other Florida homes (readers may view a picture of…