Brilloant
Good luck to him, hopefully he finds a way to avoid paying full fees on the sale, UK Stamp Duty etc of he accepts bitcoin for it.
I guess the fees are still paid even if he accepts bitcoin for payment. I'm quoting a line from the article that says:
"The sale will result in a £1.95 million stamp duty bill."
This has happened elsewhere. It is not really surprising that it happened in the UK too. According to the article the seller is doing this specifically to promote Bitcoin. Good for him, but in reality I don't think there are any advantages to accepting GPB or Bitcoin as real estate transactions are complex so an extra step taken to convert the payment between one currency type to another is nothing.
The seller says that Bitcoin transactions can be done more faster, more efficiently and more easily than banks, and banks bring overregulation according to him. So maybe that is also a reason why he has chosen Bitcoin for payment.
For lawyers here though, wouldn't there be complications regarding the contract if Bitcoins were used? That's a huge amount of money and I would think some tax collection agency would have to get involved. Won't the source of Bitcoins be investigated?
there is also the issue with taxes and possibly even raising some red flags.
The biggest problem mentioned in that article is going to be tracing the bitcoins to ensure it hasn't come from criminal sources. Won't be easy to trace that number of bitcoin!
Quoting from the article:
"Quintel, a business intelligence firm, and James Ramsden QC, a lawyer and an asset tracing specialist, will work to determine the source of a prospective buyer’s funds."