Real estate exchange for cryptocurrencies gains fans in Portugal
Cryptocurrencies have hit the real estate market. Zome was the first agency in Europe to mediate the sale of a home in bitcoins, the most recognized digital currency in the world, ushering in a new cycle in the real estate business. João Batista da Silva, chairman of the Order of Notaries (ON), for the next week, other transactions are already scheduled. And more are thought. Investor interest in gaining strength with the most animated has already gained strength again in 2019, with the pandemic fading, but now it has regained strength. Most Portuguese. The contribution to this demand is the fact that Portugal is considered a paradise for investors in cryptocurrencies, since so far the gains with these financial currencies are not subject to any taxation.
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ON played a decisive role in the launch of this business model, which can raise legal issues and be a vehicle for money laundering. As João Batista da Silva explains, the Order created a set of practical guidelines to guarantee the law and the security of transactions. The legal model asserts a secular figure: the barter. In practice, the seller is exchanging his property for another good of equal value, but it could be paintings, jewelry, cars… The biggest saving was ensuring, in this case, the control of the origin of the money to prevent money laundering.
what’s different
In this chapter, the holder of cryptocurrencies is required to present a set of documents that prove the history of this capital and where it is stored. “It is necessary to define the transaction of the first purchase of cryptocurrency, how that asset appeared, otherwise, the business made possible”, he underlined. Otherwise, the business follows the usual molds of a real estate operation.
Zome euros was in the mouths of the world with a house found in the sale of a house in Braga for almost three bitcoins 2.9875), the equivalent of 110 thousand at the date of the deed. The transaction was the materialization of the real estate network’s objective of entering the web 3.0 era “It is part of our growth strategy, but doing a business to understand how it would work in the real world”, says Carlos Santos, technology director of the agency. With the legal framework drawn up by ON, the advice of a firm of lawyers and investors, both found in the cryptocurrency universe and the technological universe, the Zome team proceeded with the operation.
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As the person in charge says, the deed took five minutes – all the details and validations were already verified at the time of signing the purchase and sale contract. It was the time necessary for the participants, each one in front of their computer, to check the digital devices that made the acquisition. To settle in euros, the tax obligations of the IMT and the Stamp Duty are left over. “For the first time in an industrial revolution, the law is present”, emphasizes Nuno Viera da Silva, lawyer at Antas da Cunha ECIJA. The process is all an innovation because, as he says, “never a public deed necessary to have digital asset compliance”.
For Carlos Santos, also an aficionado of the digital theme, the entry of cryptocurrencies into the real economy “is irreversible”. According to an advanced, about a year ago 17% of the world’s population was exposed to the ecosystem of digital currencies and, soon, “I believe that this level will reach 20%”. And this is the reason for Zome’s “great interest in being at the forefront” of this new era. Currently, “there are many people who defend how cryptocurrencies as a means of saving regardless of volatility is more interesting than other types of investments, such as the stock market”.
For Chairman ON, “it is normal that people get rich with daily assets want to materialize this economy in physical goods, want to diversify investments”. And in this chapter, real estate is a safe asset.
cautious associations
The leaders of the real estate sector are not yet surrendered to digital assets and are not sure about the potential of exchanging real estate for these currencies. Paulo Caiado APEMIP: “Not just any encounter, it is comparable to the digital base and investing in large fluctuation or value of digital base and investing in large fluctuation or value of value of allocation of financial resources, ancestral reference of value of allocation of financial resources and of benchmark and value of allocation of financial resources and solid foundation”.
And Francisco Bacelar, president of ASMIP, recalls that, “in the genesis of the real estate business, whether for own housing or for investment profitability, it is the factor of stability and appreciation”. Given “the high volatility of these types of assets, it seems risky for someone who gets 100 in the morning to only have 80, 50 or even 10 at the end of the day,” he says.
But they recognize that these digital assets can bring more investment to the country. Paulo, most cryptocurrency holders are and in the sense of most cryptocurrency holders are and in the sense of most currency holders can be foreigners in euros, to buy a house in Algarve, Porto, Lisbon. For Francisco Bacelar, this type of transaction “is a new form of funding that no country can evade.”