The three retail condos are located at 385 First Avenue in the upper East side of Manhattan.

In a sign of the times, Magnum Real Estate Group is offering a set of retail condos worth $29 million for payment against bitcoin only, a first for commercial property in the Big Apple. The condos, covering 9,000 square feet, are in a newly constructed luxury residential building with the bottom floor already leased fully to ProHealth, Mighty Pita and M&T Bank. The proposed sale shows the growing adoption of cryptocurrencies, fanning out from coffee and cars and into condos. (Yahoo Finance)

“There’s a demand for real estate and there’s nothing being offered to the holders of crypto,” Ben Shaoul, managing partner of Magnum Real Estate Group, told Yahoo Finance. “Our idea is to offer something that’s unique and try to pair the holders of crypto with those who want to sell real estate.”

Explaining the marketing strategy Shaoul said: “The fact that bitcoin is at record highs helps, but I also think investors have done very well owning bitcoin and now they’re looking for cash flow in assets and [real estate] gives someone the ability to buy a long-term real property with cash flow so they can take some chips off the table or transact and sell the asset in a few years as it’s appreciated in value to another buyer of crypto.”

Bitpay, a crypto payment processor with substantial prior experience of handling real estate transactions, will handle the condos’ deal crypto for Magnum.

How it works

The buyer of the condos transfers the bitcoin from their digital wallet to Bitpay’s wallet. Bitpay makes the payment of equivalent US dollars to Magnum through the U.S. automated clearing house for electronic funds network.

In effect the transaction is settled the next business day, whereas the traditional (non-crypto) process could have taken as much as 30 to 90 days.

Secondly, because its bitcoin, the wallet-to-wallet transaction on the blockchain can be initiated from anywhere in the world without the involvement of legacy banking channels.

Bitpay has relationships with global yacht broker Denison and luxury car dealers, including Ferrari and Lamborghini.

As bitcoin touches record highs, investors are using their crypto profits to buy luxury items. In validation of this trend, luxury items such as jewelry, gold, yachts and real estate accounted for approximately 32% of Bitpay’s payments processing volume in October.

Related Story: Is Adoption Of Bitcoin And Other Cryptos Breaking Out?

Image of Property (196 Orchard): Magnum Real Estate Group