Crypto Kings Are The Real-Estate's Newest Whales

When real-estate agent Ryan Serhant received an offer last fall for one of his listings, a roughly US$25 million Downtown Manhattan apartment, he was pleased but dubious.

The buyer, to whom he gave a property tour, seemed nice but didn’t fit the profile of Mr. Serhant’s typical high rollers who often come from Wall Street or prominent families. This buyer said he was self-employed, but when Mr. Serhant googled him, he found nothing that explained his wealth.

Wary that the offer was a hoax, Mr. Serhant asked for proof of funds and was stunned by what he received: a statement of the buyer’s cryptocurrency holdings, worth around $600 million. “It was crazy,” he said.

It is a scenario playing out across the real-estate world, as newly minted crypto-millionaires and crypto-billionaires, who have either invested in or have helped build the infrastructure that enables digital currency, have flooded the luxury market. That has led to a string of pricey deals over the past year. They include the $133 million purchase of a Bel-Air estate by Brian Armstrong, CEO of the largest U.S.-based crypto exchange, Coinbase. Other major deals include a waterfront Miami estate formerly owned by retired Miami Heat player Chris Bosh being sold for roughly $38 million to Ivan Soto-Wright, co-founder and CEO of crypto-payments infrastructure provider MoonPay. Another was the $28.5 million deal for a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, purchased by Olaf Carlson-Wee, CEO of crypto-focused investment fund Polychain Capital and Coinbase’s first employee, according to people familiar with those transactions.

Multiple Los Angeles real-estate agents said that Fred Ehrsam, a Coinbase co-founder, has been actively shopping for a property at a similar price to Mr. Armstrong’s. Gavin Wood, a co-founder of Ethereum, an app-hosting platform where ether cryptocurrency trades, is also looking for a big-ticket property in New York and has been closely eyeing a penthouse listed for $66 million at the Billionaires’ Row megatower 111 West 57th Street, according to a person familiar with the situation. Mr. Ehrsam could not be reached. Dr. Wood and Michael Stern, a developer of the 57th Street building, declined to comment.

The crypto rich are the new whales in the luxury residential market and the industry is taking notice. Real-estate developers are jumping through hoops to accept crypto. Agents are trying to lure crypto enthusiasts to their high-end listings with gimmicks such as NFT art parties. Brokerages are hosting cryptocurrency seminars for their agents. Increasingly, sellers are openly advertising that they would be willing to accept cryptocurrency in exchange for their homes.

To look at the property market, one might think that crypto has gone mainstream. But while buyers who made fortunes in crypto are flooding the market, there are still only a tiny number of deals being done entirely using cryptocurrency. Despite sellers advertising their willingness to accept crypto, most who do so take significant steps to minimize the risk of cryptocurrency price volatility by enlisting third-party platforms that transfer the crypto-payments to U.S. dollars immediately upon closing.

Cryptocurrency value is notoriously volatile. In November 2021, bitcoin traded for a record $68,990.90, up from $5,000 in March 2020. The November price was also more than double bitcoin’s 52-week low of $28,825.76 in July 2021, according to CoinDesk. But, as of Jan. 26, bitcoin was trading back at around $38,000. The top 10,000 individual bitcoin accounts held an aggregate $232 billion, a recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research reported.

This is a new class of investor that society didn’t know about a few years ago, said Miami developer Alex Sapir, who sold a $22.5 million apartment that was purchased with cryptocurrency last year. “You’re getting them in the early onset stages of their investment career.”

For some crypto owners, “it’s gotten to the point now where it’s like, ‘OK, so what do I do with all this?’ ” Mr. Serhant said.

Some crypto owners are starting to look to diversify into other assets while, for others, “the name of the game in crypto is hoarding crypto,” said Bill Barhydt, founder of Abra, which manages over $1 billion in crypto and offers loans for down payments that are backed by the borrower’s crypto. “People who borrow against crypto don’t want to sell it; they’re highly motivated,” he said.

Lane Rettig, a developer for Ethereum and Spacemesh, a blockchain platform, said he and his wife, Lily Rettig, bought a 1,500-square-foot condo on Central Park North for $3.5 million last year, as a way of diversifying their assets. Mr. Rettig, 38, said the couple made a down payment on the three-bedroom unit in cash in part because he is long on crypto and doesn’t want to sell his bitcoin. The mortgage didn’t take into account Mr. Rettig’s crypto holdings because he manages the assets in a self-custody wallet, he said. “I can’t give a bank a piece of paper saying, ‘Lane has x, y and z.’ It’s a screenshot of an app,” he said.

However, Mr. Rettig said their loan officer was comfortable with the terms and large loan size, relative to the couple’s income, having seen evidence of Mr. Rettig’s crypto assets. “In my mind, it’s an arbitrage of rates,” Mr. Rettig said of the mortgage. “My worst-case scenario for bitcoin is a lot better than 3% a year.”

Jonathan Yantis, an early bitcoin miner and Blockchain investor, said he was also reluctant to sell his bitcoin when buying and selling several luxury homes over the past two years. In late 2021, Mr. Yantis purchased a roughly 40-acre estate outside Denver for $12.5 million. In Hawaii, he sold an oceanfront home on Maui for $15 million in May 2021. He also owns a roughly 10-acre estate on the island, which he bought for $24 million in December 2020. In December 2021, he listed that property for $59.5 million. “I want to build a custom house—the largest in Maui,” he said in an email.

Mr. Yantis said he purchased in U.S. dollars, which crypto investors call fiat currency, otherwise known as government-issued money. First, he sold crypto—not bitcoin—for tether, another cryptocurrency that is pegged to the U.S. dollar. Then he converted the tether to U.S. dollars.

While he has been on a real-estate buying spree, he would still choose to invest in crypto over a bricks and mortar asset, he said. “Real estate makes nothing in returns compared with crypto, where you can 100x your investment,” said Mr. Yantis, 51, who is co-founder of WAX, or Worldwide Asset eXchange, an NFT blockchain. “Less than 1% of my net worth is in real estate. That should say how bullish I am on the crypto markets.”

Mr. Yantis acknowledged that crypto’s volatility can impact its conversion to U.S. dollars. “I keep some cash set aside for when the market crashes,” Mr. Yantis said. Right now, he characterized the crypto market as being in “extreme fear,” meaning, he says, it is a great time to buy.

Only a handful of luxury real-estate deals across the country have actually been completed using cryptocurrencies, and in most cases the sellers have opted to transfer the crypto to U.S. dollars immediately upon closing.

For instance, the developers of Arte, a boutique condominium in Miami’s Surfside neighborhood, announced last spring that they had sold the penthouse at the building for $22.5 million to a purchaser using cryptocurrency. While initially touting how the deal showed the viability of cryptocurrency’s decentralized payment system in the U.S. real-estate market, Mr. Sapir, one of the developers, said they converted it to U.S. dollars immediately because, as a publicly reporting entity, they couldn’t hold cryptocurrency.

Some buyers and sellers use BitPay to facilitate crypto transactions. Through BitPay, sellers can generate an email invoice, which the buyer can pay from their preferred crypto wallet, either manually or by scanning a QR code. BitPay then transfers the funds to the seller in U.S. dollars via direct deposit the next business day. The price is set for 15 minutes to avoid dramatic swings in the crypto’s value. The QR code expires after 15 minutes and a new invoice needs to be generated. This locks in the price for the buyer.

Developer PMG recently became the first real-estate developer to accept preconstruction condo deposits in crypto, said managing partner Ryan Shear. Last year, the company partnered with FTX US, a major cryptocurrency exchange, to accept crypto as a down payment for units at two of its buildings, E11EVEN Hotel & Residences and the Waldorf Astoria Residences in Miami, Mr. Shear said.

To accept crypto, PMG had to partner with a regulated exchange that could quickly convert crypto to U.S. dollars, then convince an escrow agent to accept down payments from the exchange, rather than directly from the developer. Mr. Shear said most escrow agents looked at him like he was crazy, but “20 lawyers, one year later, and a lot of brain damage, everybody got comfortable.”

So far, PMG has accepted crypto for a handful of units, said Mr. Shear, who said it was easier to implement because PMG owned the land unencumbered by bank debt. “I have to imagine if our lender was in place…they might have shut it down,” he said. “Lenders are conservative. It’s not in their nature to take unnecessary risks.”

Avi Dabir, vice president of business development at FTX US, said he sees real estate as a growing sector for the company because crypto transactions are faster and more efficient than traditional deals, which rely on an often-cumbersome banking system.“If I want to send a wire transfer today using my traditional bank account, it’s got to be banking hours, I need to make sure I hit that wire cutoff time and I can’t do it on the weekends,” he said. “That’s not a problem with cryptocurrency. It’s open 24/7.”

For regular homesellers, the prospect of accepting cryptocurrency can be intimidating.

In Miami, real-estate agent Keith Marks of Brown Harris Stevens Miami and his partner, Sonia Toth, said they recently sold a condominium for $7.2 million worth of the cryptocurrency ether after the buyer agreed to make the down payment in U.S. dollars. The agents declined to comment on the identities of the buyer or seller, but records show the seller was a company tied to Brazilian businessman Roberto Justus, known for starring in the Brazilian version of “The Apprentice.” The buyer is listed in records as Federico Gutierrez Castro. Mr. Justus didn’t respond to a request for comment and Mr. Castro couldn’t be reached.

Mr. Marks said the seller of the unit, a four-bedroom at One Thousand Museum, a luxury building designed by architect Zaha Hadid, initially balked at the ether offer, wondering if it was a gimmick or worse. “There’s always this fear that, you know, what if this is somebody moving drug money?” he said. “Or I sell the unit and all of a sudden…the money is impounded or something?”

After consulting an attorney, the seller accepted the offer and the deal proceeded smoothly, with a cash down payment to avoid the risk of currency fluctuations. The buyer paid the balance in ether, but the seller organized to have it immediately converted to U.S. dollars upon closing.

In the eyes of the IRS, cryptocurrency is treated as property, according to tax expert Alan Fyne of Dinnall Fyne & Company, who worked for the seller on the crypto deal at One Thousand Museum. Someone who buys bitcoin at $1 and sells at $10,000 must report $9,999 as profit, whether it is short-term or long-term capital gains.

Mr. Fyne said he does see potential for abuse. The process could potentially be exploited, he said, by those “laundering money for bad actors” as well as by those attempting to avoid taxes on the sale of their cryptocurrency if it has appreciated over time. The danger, Mr. Fyne said, also lies in the fact that, in some cases, it can be difficult to trace the origin of crypto funds. While cryptocurrency exchanges usually demand some background from participants on the platform, the process isn’t as rigorous as the scrutiny applied by banks to mortgage applicants, for instance.

“We received some crypto, the sale went down. And do we really know who it came from?” he said.

PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate moldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.

Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighborhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.

This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.

Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.

According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.

For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.

“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”

In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.

In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.

Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.

The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.

The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.

The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.

The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.

A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”

With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.

The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.

During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot

Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.

Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.

In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.

Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.

Crypto Kings Are The Real-Estate’s Newest Whales

Those who have made fortunes in digital currency are the new darlings of the high-end property market.

Ahead of the Games, a breakdown of the city’s most desirable places to live

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot