One of Turkey’s leading estate agency, Antalya Homes, says they have sold nine properties for bitcoins in 2018 after they begun accepting the cryptocurrency for payments.
The company says they also accept Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum in addition to Stellar and even Tether.
“Payment with cryptocurrency enables a more reliable and faster transaction performance such as money transfer between bank accounts without any exchange loss,” Bayram Tekce, Chairman of Antalya Homes said.
How much was paid in bitcoin for these properties is not clear, with Trustnodes awaiting a response. However, property prices in Turkey start at €30,000 ($34,000).
Thus at the lower end at least $306,000 was paid for the properties, currently translating to about 80 bitcoins.
The estate agency has an entire page dedicated to paying with bitcoin where they say “when you transfer bitcoin to the wallet code of the company owner, we deliver directly title deed on the same day.”
They also say you can pay for part of the property in bitcoin “should their value be less than the asking price, or they do not wish to completely exhaust their cryptocurrency investment portfolio.”
You apparently can get citizenship in Turkey if you buy properties worth $250,000 with Antalya Homes saying they have helped thousands of foreigners obtain a home in Turkey to date.
A Crypto Boom in Turkey?
Crypto adoption in the country appears to be increasing with some reports suggesting crypto ownership in Turkey is one of the highest in Europe.
The reason might be lack of a robust banking system, considerably high inflation, some recent currency troubles that plunged Turkish money, and perhaps more importantly cryptos’ ability to easily move internationally.
Most online services tend to be based in the west and cater primarily towards a western market, with payments usually requiring a credit card or likewise services.
In many developing or newly industrialized countries, access to debit or credit cards can be in very short supply, while cryptos could potentially even be mined on ones laptop.
That ease of international payments without any requirements save for crypto ownership might be one of the biggest use case for cryptocurrencies as they could allow non-western citizens or those in countries with an underdeveloped banking system to access the same online services as Americans, Brits, and Europeans.
Copyrights Trustnodes.com
