Category: Blockchain

Meanwhile, the Homesharing Platform Is Helping Homeowners in Ukraine This might just be the year Airbnb meets bitcoin. A team of Airbnb employees is currently looking at how the platform could accept cryptocurrency payments. Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky has said the most requested feature for 2022 is a crypto payment option. It’s likely to…

South Korea — renowned for its pop culture and a $16+ billion gaming sector — is perfectly poised to flourish in digitized worlds. K-pop singers have launched hits in the metaverse and real estate is popping up to host future concerts. Naver Z’s World, a metaverse leader based in South Korea, has attracted international fashion…

A Miami mansion will become a first-of-a-kind this year. It will be sold as a real house, featuring seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms — together with its mirror property in the metaverse. The physical house will be sold by ONE Sotheby’s International Realty. Sotheby’s International Realty has 1,000 offices in 40 countries, and is keen on innovation…

Life in the Metaverse Tokenized real estate has met the metaverse, creating something new: virtual real estate. Virtual developers are sweeping millions of dollars’ worth of crypto coins into property deals. They see a robust online economy in the making. Are they dreaming?  

A Hint at Regulation to Come No pain, no gain. The adage rings true at the gym, and it’s also an apt description for real estate transactions. Is any legal milestone loaded with more bureaucracy, more back-and-forth questions, more legions of intermediaries—all racking up fees for the documents they produce every step of the way?…

Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are becoming money in Argentina. In May 2021, the massive e-commerce firm Mercado Libre started enabling people to buy Argentina real estate with bitcoin. At that time Argentina’s real property could only be paid for in U.S. dollars. For the price of two bitcoins, a buyer could get a place to…

Puerto Rico is welcoming residents from the mainland in record numbers. For years running, financial tech startups have set up headquarters in Puerto Rico, so the growing list of newcomers from the mainland reads like part of the tech sector who’s-who list. The big draw? A law that lets new residents pay nothing on capital…

Fannie and Freddie Weigh In The future is here. People now buy homes with bitcoin. Some of the most upmarket real estate listings accept top cryptocurrencies and even showcase blockchain-based digital art inside the home. (The art concept is pretty intriguing. People buying digital art as part of a home could build massive collections of and…

Time to Get Meta? In October 2021, Facebook changed its name in homage to the metaverse. By combining real and online worlds, the metaverse, says Facebook, will be “the next evolution in a long line of social technologies.”  So this is why Facebook has been suggesting that people make all those cartoonish avatars of ourselves?…

Not too long ago, we reported on United Wholesale Mortgage and its eye-catching plan to accept cryptocurrencies for mortgages by late 2021. As we wrote then: Whether the idea will find adherents remains to be seen. Certainly, many UWM customers are big crypto holders. But that doesn’t mean they want to part with their digital…

Cryptocurrency is on a roll as we go to press. Things can change quickly in this arena, but right now, values are high. Bitcoin has never been higher. BITO, a new exchange traded fund (ETF) for bitcoin futures has come out. Even Berkshire Hathaway is talking about buying a home with bitcoin. And now Coinbase,…

Luxury Portfolio International now finds cryptocurrency closing in on gold as the most sought-after store of value among the world’s affluent people. The finding is based on a survey of more than 3,000 respondents, as noted in the firm’s report State of Luxury Real Estate 2021: Finances of the Luxury Home Buyer. Well over half…

An Industry First The Blimp Homes app brings real estate sellers and seekers together with agents. And with Blimp, there’s something more. Together with the Home Network Foundation (homefoundation.io), Blimp Homes has introduced an industry first: a home search platform is designed to be decentralized, user-focused and transparent. It’s built on the HOME Protocol — on…

United Wholesale Mortgage wants to take payments in cryptocurrency by late 2021. The point? To be the first mortgage company to take the plunge. “I’m not going to sit here and wait for everyone else to do it and then follow,” CEO Mat Ishbia told Julie Hyman for Yahoo Finance. The CEO first broke the…