Australians are now able to buy a house using cryptocurrency, as Lloyds Auctions Australia has announced it is accepting Bitcoin for purchases of real estate in online auctions, according to a press release shared with Forkast.News.
Fast facts
- While Covid lockdowns impacted how in-person real estate auctions could take place in Australia, Lloyds began looking for digital alternatives to allow prospective buyers to continue to participate in sales, including online auctions and offering digital walkthroughs of properties. Running until the end of the month, the first of the auctions began last week and Lloyds says there has already been a great deal of interest in the online format and for cryptocurrency as a payment method.
- “The use of cryptocurrency as a payment method is becoming more commonly used for purchases as confidence surrounding cryptocurrency gets stronger,” said Lee Hames, chief operating officer for Lloyds Auctioneers and Valuers, in a statement. “This opens up our platform to a whole new audience who otherwise might not have been interested in purchasing property.”
- Lloyds had begun accepting cryptocurrency as payment for all goods across its marketplace earlier this year, which saw the sale of a caravan worth AU$100,000 (US$76,000) paid in Bitcoin within hours of the launch of the new payment method. This followed only days after fellow auction house Sotheby’s announced it would accept cryptocurrency in the upcoming auction of a 101.38 carat diamond, which eventually sold for HK$95.1 million (US$12.3 million), setting the record for the most expensive physical object ever bought with crypto.
- The highest price ever paid for real estate with cryptocurrency was in June, when an anonymous buyer paid US$22.5 million of an undisclosed cryptocurrency for a property in Miami. The sale also broke the city’s highest price-per-square-foot record.