- Chinese crypto millionaires buying up American properties
- Guo Hongcai sold 500 Bitcoin to buy 100,000-square-foot mansion in California
- Deals often channeled via Hong Kong
A new generation of cryptocurrency millionaires from China is frantically investing in real estate, mainly in the US and the UK.
One of them is Guo Hongcai, a man who used to sell beef for a living in China’s Shanxi province. This early Bitcoin adopter is one of many new millionaires looking for safe havens to stash their fortunes, and many of them are finding value in the US property market.
In April, he sold 500 Bitcoin in the United States and used the funds to purchase a 100,000-square-foot luxury home in Los Gatos, about 90 minutes from San Francisco.
His Rolls Royce is parked in the driveway near a small chive garden. He said: “It’s very normal to sell Bitcoin in the US. After selling Bitcoin, you can just buy anything you want.”
Hongcai refers to his California villa as his “Mansion of Chives” because in Chinese, the word for chives is also used as slang for cryptocurrency investors who prove vulnerable to major market sell-offs.
With Chinese regulators clamping down on industry firms, people like Hongcai are increasingly turning to overseas property markets to diversify their portfolios. Some directly convert their cryptocurrency holdings into real estate, but he opted to get his hands on foreign currencies without involving a bank.
The founders of one particular US cryptocurrency property startup said in an interview with CoinDesk that nearly a third of their prospective clients were from Asia.
The South China Morning Post recently said that property in Hong Kong doesn’t come with all the documentation and taxes that other financial assets held overseas offer. This is why Chinese investments in overseas property markets are often made via Hong Kong brokers.
