Bucharest real estate agency to start accepting payments in Bitcoin

Anca Alexe 18/12/2017 | 14:26

Bucharest real estate agency Cityland, specialised in new residential developments, will soon start to accept payments in Bitcoin for their properties. The agency claims that the growing popularity of the virtual coin among potential investors led them to the decision, according to profit.ro.

Paul Pop, Partner at Cityland, argued: “As we have noticed an increase in the number of Romanians who are active on the Bitcoin market, many of whom are also interested in real estate investments, we have decided to offer them the option of comparing their Bitcoin portfolio to the real estate market, and even acquire properties directly using the virtual coin.”

Apartment prices will be listed in the virtual currency, they will start at 4 Bitcoin and they will be updated daily.

Bitcoin was worth around USD 5,000 in August 2017, but since then the currency’s market value grew by over 300 percent, and it is expected to rise above USD 30,000 by February 2018.

On Friday, Bitcoin reached a record value of USD 18,000 on the Bitstamp exchange platform, seeing a 9 percent increase despite the growing number of warnings from financial experts regarding the high risk of investing in this extremely volatile and speculative financial asset.

The rapid growth of Bitcoin has generated worries about it possibly being a speculative bubble which could “burst” in a spectacular manner in the near future. Bitcoin had an 80 percent growth in December alone.

Romanian Economist Daniel Daianu also warned about Bitcoin’s speculative nature and made clear distinction between cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, which is already being used by large financial institutions in order to improve security and transparency.