Suddenly, Bitcoin Breaks into UK Housing Market as Down Payment

[ivrynx]

this is good news, after china had banned their ICOs, surely this will give an increase to the value of bitcoin. hopefully others will follow this trend, since bitcoin is giving us hope, now those who have bitcoins on their hands, can now afford to buy a house, if they have enough.bitcoins. this just goes too show you that bitcoin can give a lot of benefits and hopefully this could also be true to cars. now we can surely look forward for a bettwr future, if this trend keeps on going, more and more people will surely accept bitcoin, and hopefully.by that time, we have more than enough in our wallets.

[amacar2]

Still have to go through this full article but this news looks really good for bitcoin or whole crypto. Bitcoin payments are hassle free compared to all those chargebacks we have with other reversible payment methods. Sooner or later more merchants will acept bitcoin after realizing that price volatality on bitcoin can be covered by the use of third party gateways like bitpay.

[gentlemand]

Everyone seems to be getting a little overexcited because one organisation has introduced an idea that'll probably turn to shit anyway. Deposits are dodgy enough even when there aren't insane exchange rate fluctuations.

What would really count would be a national chain of estate agents or letting agents taking it on.

[countryfree]

Don't want to spend too much time on this, but can you effectively BUY a property there?

https://www.thecollective.co.uk/coliving/faq

It looks like some kind of a student house where you pay by the week.

[guillzini]

While I do not see a problem with buying using bitcoin I think rental is more difficult. If a property was being rented at £800 per month or 0.2 bitcoin at time of agreement then if price of bitcoin increases then tenant will have to pay more using the same amount of bitcoin. A tenant could not be sure how much in £'s they would be paying monthly.

You can add a clause to the agreement stating that, for example, rent is due at the 1st of the month. You can agree on a timestamp, say 12AM each 1st of the month. Then calculate the BTC due for the month according to it's value in fiat at that timestamp.

Of course you can say there's risk involved because the value can increase or decrease, but as a tenant, you shouldn't be spending your BTC if you want to use them as an investment. And the landlord shouldn't hesitate and convert BTC to fiat if they don't want to risk losing money that month. If everything is worked out properly in an agreement, this thing could easily work.

[Mometaskers]

I agree, the landlords will likely say at the end that, "I will return to you the value of your bitcoins at the time you deposited them to me" which means the landlords are going to return only the equivalent bitcoins at the time it will be returned. What if it raised by 10 times, and the tenant will only get 10% that means.

You telling me the landlord might only give back the fiat value? Well better make it clear in the contract that he will give back the exact bitcoin AMOUNT.

If it's not specifically mentioned in the agreement, all deposits should be returned in their exact form. If the landlord was given a payment in BTC he should return the same exact payment, unless stated otherwise. They were not dealing in fiat or fiat value of BTC. Even the fees can't be deducted, you paid a fee to send it to the landlord and are expecting him to pay back the exact amount. If he screws up and sends it with a too low fee, the loss is on him.

That should be the case, although this is the first time I heard a cryptocurrency being used as a deposit. If I were the renter I would probably ensure everything is clear. It seem people in the US and Europe are fond of lawsuits, it's possible to lose the btc.

[pixie85]

With the current prices on UK housing market I'm not surprised they are trying new payments to bring in more customers.
Houses in the UK and especially in London, are the most expensive in Europe.

[smartbitcoininvestor]

One more down, millions more to go. Every piece of news about someone taking on Bitcoin as a payment option is another notch for the ultimate success of Bitcoin. 

It would be cool if football stadiums accepted Bitcoin for tickets.

But honestly, I can't wait until major Internet platforms like Facebook, Uber and Amazon accept Bitcoin. That's when the real progress will happen.

[sana54210]

It is quite appreciable that after 8 years at last United Kingdom accepts bitcoin as a legal currency and is using it in their local market.

By this step other European countries will also take some serious steps to legalize bitcoin in their respective countries. And by this one day bitcoin will be usable all over the world in every sector of life. People are choosing digital currency instead of paper money.

[Proteania Dev]

This is awesome news. Gradual adoption will see the value go up over time.