Bitcoin first entered the language in 2008, when Satoshi Nakamoto published a vision for what the internet could be.

This was titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” and the paper described a way for electronic money to go from person to person without relying on any financial institution to process those payments. Several months after that, the first bitcoins made their way into the world.

If bitcoin is similar to U.S. dollars, it’s only insofar that it’s worth something because we think so. In fact, as Sue Halpern, writing in the New York Review of Books, notes: “Its value derives entirely from people’s perception of what it is worth.” Otherwise, bitcoin is just encrypted code, stored as an address in online software. As it’s transacted, it travels on a decentralized network of computers that operates as a ledger to record and authenticate transactions—the blockchain.

The way bitcoin moves over the blockchain makes it safe.

 Owners use a private key, known only to them, to buy in bitcoin or cash it out. The blockchain matches the key to the address, and if those two components don’t match up, the transaction is rejected.  Making it extraordinarily safe, especially considering the issues that title companies have had as of late with wires.

How a property transaction is financed with bitcoin in the mix will change depending on several variables—as well as whether the deal to make a piece of property change hands is done in bitcoin, or whether a buyer is just converting their bitcoin assets to cash to come up with the purchase price.

From a technical standpoint, an all-bitcoin deal isn’t complicated: It works like an all-cash purchase, except bitcoins are exchanged from the buyer’s digital wallet to the seller’s digital wallet. In a deal where the buyer is interested in converting their bitcoins to fiat to hit the purchase price, they’ll use a service like BitPay to convert digital currency into physical dollars. That’s how the land in North Lake Tahoe was acquired.

How Do You Purchase?

You only need one thing — for two parties to agree on the transaction. "I recently paid for my doctor's visit in bitcoin because my physician is also a bitcoin investor," says Jake. Enthusiasts are purchasing a

wide variety of items with their bitcoins, from pizzas to real estate.

The first real estate transaction was a single-family home in Austin, Texas. The seller wanted the bitcoins converted to dollars, so they used BitPay, a global bitcoin payment service provider, to complete the transaction. Bitcoin's value fluctuates every day, so the risk is on the buyer's side since the seller agreed to a fixed dollar amount.

"The pros of buying real estate with bitcoin is that once everything is signed, the transaction completion time takes 10 minutes to a day depending on network congestion," says Jake. "Think about that for a second — no need for the banking system. You can pay for the house, the realtor and anyone else at the same time."

However, make sure you trust the second party if you're thinking of buying into real estate. "If you want to reverse the transaction due to any litigation, then you need both parties to be compliant," says Jake. "Bitcoin transactions are not reversible."

However, make sure you trust the second party if you're thinking of buying into real estate. "If you want to reverse the transaction due to any litigation, then you need both parties to be compliant," says Jake. "Bitcoin transactions are not reversible."

You can't buy a house with a mortgage payment — yet. Ethereum, a cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin, is one built on making smart contracts. "I envision having open-sourced mortgage contracts that parties would interface rather than using the traditional contract," says Jake. "Smart contracts are self-enforcing mediums, so no third party is necessary once the mortgage contract is cryptographically signed."

Ready?  We are.  Few if any professionals in the mortgage and real estate industry are as versed in cryptocurrency as us.  We can put together the processes and transactions for you.  Let’s talk.