More than 200 people have turned out to watch the world’s first live cryptocurrency house auction on the east coast of Australia.
The property just fell short of the reserve, however those involved in the process say the robust bidding showed there was support for the innovative approach to selling real estate.
How it unfolded
- The auction began with James Pratt from James Pratt Auctions taking the first bid of 40,000 Binance tokens (BNB).
- There was then a bid of 50,000 BNB, before Mr Pratt took cash offers to $1.5 million (or 205 BTC)
- The bidding closed at $3.4m (or 457 BTC) and the property was passed in.
Global broadcast
Throughout the auction, Mr Pratt stood beside a large screen, which showed the current bids in both the Bitcoin and Binance coins amount and also the conversion to the latest Australian Dollar (AUD) cash rate.
Over the counter (OTC) digital currency exchange Trigon X was on hand to assist on the day and registered participants were able to bid in cash if they preferred.
After the property was passed in, listing agent Nick Witheriff said he was pleased with the result.
“I’m thrilled with the outcome, we are in a strong position and will continue negotiating with these buyers in Bitcoin,” he said.
“We also have had another buyer joining in negotiating from a recent inspection.”
Significant public interest
The organisers of the auction say one of the biggest takeaways was the statistics the cryptocurrency house auction produced.
On average, the property had more than 180,000 views online per week over the four weeks leading up to auction.
“This astounding result is around 175,000 more views per week than the average auction property gets in this area,” said Mr Pratt.
“This type of interest level isn’t common on this marketing budget.
“I find these high buyer enquiry numbers are usually found on celebrity houses or a $20 million home whereby the vendor has to pay a lot more in marketing costs.”
The organisers say another key take away was the international reach the auction achieved, with genuine interest coming from the USA, China, Dubai, the UK and Canada.
Successful experiment
NuYen Blockchain, which provided the back-end support for the auction, was delighted with the outcome.
“One of the biggest points of validation was requests we received from home owners both in Australia and internationally, asking could we sell their house the same way,” NuYen Australian president Greg Costello said.
Throughout the campaign some well known personalities from within the Cryptocurrency space showed support for the auction, including Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ), who tweeted about the auction.