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Canadian Man Wants To Trade Home For Bitcoins
An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from CBC News: " It's not often that Canadian real estate listings make international headlines, but a mid-sized Alberta bungalow has people around the world buzzing today after its owner declared that he would like to sell it — for Bitcoins. If successful, 22-year-old entrepreneur Taylor More would be the first person ever to accept the fast-rising virtual currency in exchange for property. 'My home is being traded for Bitcoins!' reads the listing for More's 'quaint' two bedroom home in Crowsnest Pass, Alberta. ... The property is listed for $405,000 CDN, but More writes that 'the price can be reduced" if a buyer has some Bitcoins to spare.'"
...he will accept some Bitcoins in part payment. Different!
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
At least he does not accept the full price in Bitcoin. There seems to be some hope for him left.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's entirely possible that he doesn't have a mortgage payment, you know. Not everyone is in debt up to their eyeballs and some people have actually paid off their houses.
Thanks for trip back to the '90s web.
You should probably stay there next time.
Better than accepting *Canadian* dollars ;)
Sounds like the kind of guy who would blow all his bitcoins shopping on Silk Road.
Perhaps he has accumulated a lot of bitcoins and is attempting to make them worth something though a PR game before he divests for real money.
"Hey, there's this guy who is selling his house for 'bitcoins.' I'm reading up on them, they sound interesting, I'm going to buy some bitcoins!"
I suppose much of the financial industry is based on similar principles, so the only thing I find at fault there is that he actually collected some bitcoins at some point.
The guy is 22. Unless he inherited the house, he still has a mortgage to pay off.
22 year olds don't pay off their mortgages. His dad was an NHL player and the house came from his mothers family. He didn't work for it. There are lots of young punks in Alberta that inherited houses and land when the grandparents died and no one wants to move back to the farm or small town so they sell it. And since the housing boom in 2005 land prices went up rediculiously in small towns thanks to immigration and temporary foreign residents. Most people in Alberta are up to their eyeballs in debt it is expensive to live and wages have dropped steadily or the last 5 years because so many foreign resident live here. They cram 10 - 15 people in a house and under cut the local contractors and work for less wages than locals so they can squirrel away a few dollars to send home, the place with the high exchange rate they came from. A job that paid $35/hr 5 years ago pays $20-$25 now. Where I live milk is $7 a gallon, bannanas are almost $1/lb, a single cucumber is $2. I live in a town with 420 houses. 50 are currently for sale. Half the local bussnesses have shut down. Everyone wants to move but you can't sell your house.
That's called a Euro, dear.
Not necessarily. Stop generalizing.
Dude, you can get weed legally in several US states now! Pack up your poutine machine and come on down!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
the tax man will not take them also need to pay other fees in cash as well.
Another report labeled the 22 year old as a "former currency trader", so you're probably right on target.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
This isn't exactly representative but isn't too far off, either. The cost of living is commesurately high in comparison to the economy's strength. Unless you're in business, or working directly in the construction or oil industries, you're probably relatively poor.
In other words: god damn immigrants! Go back where you came from!
Oh, Alberta. Canada's Texas.
The asking price is redonculously high for Crowsnest Pass. Fyi it is nowhere near the oilpatch - in size of Texas units for americans, It's about the same as driving from Corpus Christi to Kansas City. Much of it on secondary routes.
My first thought was tax evasion, but currency manipulation seems more likely now that I've looked up the MLS listings in Crowsnest Pass.
Also that area is known for having a lot of tax refuser/corporation sole/"free person"/gold standard etc nutjobs because for a while it was officially claimed by neither AB nor BC due to one province's boundary legislation being based on a river (which moved) and the other being based on survey points of the river before it moved.
No, as a Canadian who has dealt with both Albertans and Texans ... Texans are much nicer people.
Lets say you want to buy a wireless router or a house. You look at the price in Bitcoins based on todays BTC/USD value and buy enough bitcoins in the market and pay for the item. It really doesn't make a difference what the value of the BTC currency is or if the price is BTC or USD, the only differences is that 1) paying in BTC requires an extra step to get and 2) it's much simpler to actually pay/move the money when you have the BTC. I have no problem selling anything in BTC, including my apartment, since BTC is as good as / better than any fiat paper currency.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
I don't think you can say that everyone who makes risky investments is in need of psychiatric evaluation.
Some clown selling his house for virtual trinkets, or that that dumpy looking placed on claimed land is worth 400,000
yea, first thing show me where you people find goods for sale that accept bitcoins.
No, the usual astroturfers began posting their FUD right away. Which rises the question: are they employed by governments or banks? In other words, which fears Bitcoin more: governments, for not being able to inflate the currency, or the banks, for no longer being able to nickel-and-dime people? Or am I ignoring the most obvious culprit: VISA, for no longer being able to tax all online transactions?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
To be clear, a lot of people who are pro-immigration take issue with the country's approach to foreign workers.
There are many kinds of immigration. Only a subset of those will lead to the broken labor market we're seeing in some parts of Canada.
Also, many of these immigrants are from the Philippines and quite honestly, everybody loves Filipinos. While some Canadians are blaming the "god damn immigrants", not all of them are. They're blaming the employers that don't want to pay Canadian salaries and/or the government for allowing employers to hire foreign workers.
In my province, minimum wage went up about 60% - 70% in the past eight to ten years, and employers couldn't find enough people to work in minimum wage jobs. But housing has doubled in that time. The cost of gas fluctuates wildly but is a practical necessity because we don't have practical public transit.
Employers don't have to increase their salaries because they can hire foreigners.
I don't blame the foreigners for this one and neither do a lot of other people. But government allows this broken labor market and employers take advantage of it. Not only does it keep salaries down, but it guarantees that a certain percentage of discretionary income leaves the province or country. (I don't know how this compares to Canadian citizens with relatives overseas or taking out-of-country vacations.)
The situation also leads to a broken market in housing because now employers are paying for housing and not consumers.
Imagine the school textbook racket or the real estate racket of an oil- or LNG-rich Gulf country happening to your own backyard.
" I live in a town with 420 houses"
That's soo cool, I live in a 420 house. *cough, cough* Duuude!
In other words: god damn immigrants! Go back where you came from!
Oh, Alberta. Canada's Texas.
You should really open your eyes, look around, and do some research before you trivialize some very serious standard of living and wealth distribution questions and comments in Canada as anti-immigrant sentiment.
Cost of housing doubles in less than ten years, or worse... but salary doesn't keep up, or maybe even decreases. The work still gets done because of foreign workers. And somebody who points this out is necessarily anti-immigrant?
While Canadians have an unsustainable sense of entitlement that needs to be put in check, don't think this is all about unrealistic expectations. The wealth gap in this country is growing and has been for some time. The rich aren't just getting richer. They're not even just getting richer faster. They're getting richer, faster, and at a faster rate of faster. You'd probably have to take the second derivative of that curve before you have any hope of finding a straight line.
I live in Alberta, and its more likely than not that the house is already completely paid off. This is one of the provinces where there is substantial wealth all around.
LOL
Not where I live, but I truly believe you are making this bullshit up as you go along. "Where I live milk is $7 a gallon, bannanas are almost $1/lb". --Clearly you don't live in Alberta then. Milk has been sold in litres here for more than 35 years. Likewise bananas in kg, not pounds. I call you out on your lies! 10-15 people in a house is illegal. And I don't know which part of Alberta you are talking about "420 houses, 50 are for sale", but not any place I can think of has that. Most places have a housing shortage. I live in one of the large cities, and 5000 people are moving to this city every week. Unemployment is still below 4.5%.
but a mid-sized Alberta bungalow has people around the world buzzing today
s/buz/snoo
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Right, because anyone who thinks Bitcoin is dumb must be a shill for some shadowy interest that fears its potential.
Just like anyone who thinks Bitcoin is good must be a speculator who's working to further his pump-and-dump scheme.
It's amazing how everyone who discusses Bitcoin at all is engaged in one sinister conspiracy or the other.
Is this another view of the place? Is this another view of the house?: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/16463426
No, but anyone who posts on a Bitcoin story explaining how dumb he thinks it is probably has some kind of reason for it. And an organized FUD campaign is certainly a plausible explanation for the amount and vehemency of such posts.
Or he could simply want to use it for making online payments without needing the approval of third parties.
The difference is that the people who advocate Bitcoin have a plausible non-sinister reason for doing so: they want to use it. It is harder to see what the motivation of someone who calls for mental evaluation of someone for using it might be, besides spreading FUD.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I wasn't aware that you could exchange monopoly money for Bitcoins. Apparently I'm going to be super rich really soon.
There's a house in canada
You could look here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade
Yes, and as Occam's razor tells us, the most likely reason is the simplest and most straightforward one: that person thinks Bitcoin is dumb.
A far more plausible explanation is that Bitcoin is a counter-intuitive idea that has yet to really prove itself and whose loudest supporters often overlap with those who give it a bad name. Especially since there isn't any evidence of corporate or government interests recruiting people to make anti-Bitcoin posts on forums.
Yes, and similarly, a Bitcoin critic is far more likely to hate Bitcoin for whatever (valid or not) personal reasons than he is to be a member of some shadowy anti-Bitcoin forum cartel.
The motivation is a desire to use hyperbole and/or personal abuse to embellish one's point. A very poor debate tactic, to be sure, but it doesn't suggest that the poster is acting on behalf of some faceless conspiracy.
20 houses listed on kijiji in my town never mind the ones being sold by realators. There are ten houses on my street five were for sale last year. 2 took down the signs, 2 took a little over 2 years to sell at a loss to the owners, one is still for sale. ,sometimes grandparents and even 4-6 kids is a lot of people in a house. Temporary foreign workers usually live 2/4 per basement suite due to high rent cost. Low unemployment is because many low income people work 2-3 part time jobs because none of the bussnesses that hire min/wage employes hire full time to avoid paying pensions and benefits. It cost me $1,500 to get 2 teeth pulled on my 4 year old since my benefits don't kick in till May and I'm fortunate to make a decent income. Not everyone lives in Edmonton or Calgary buddy.
Here is a town of 5700 by edmonton
http://edmonton.kijiji.ca/f-vegreville-real-estate-houses-for-sale-W0QQCatIdZ35QQKeywordZvegrevilleQQisSearchFormZtrue
http://www.calgarysrealestate.ca/vegreville.php
https://www.google.ca/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=real+estate+vegreville+alberta&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&redir_esc=&ei=uWpPUZjXOc3PigLfm4G4Aw#hl=en&client=ubuntu&hs=CrY&channel=fs&q=vegreville+real+estate+listings&revid=1903828307&sa=X&ei=umpPUfCqAqqDjALCmYD4Bw&ved=0CKgBENUCKAA&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44158598,d.cGE&fp=fc703c3c98ada1dc&biw=1393&bih=672
Sorry $6.79 for 4 litres of milk, $4.65 for 1 litre chocolate milk. Bananas are $1.96 -$2.20/kg at the local store. All the small town goceries are run by koreans or chinese and although they use KG at the till everything is labled in LB on the shelf. Most rural people in Alberta use english measure for daily activities (ie. miles, pounds,feet,inches, bushels etc) so does residential construction we buy 2x4's, 4x8 sheets of plywood, floor tiles are in inches, pipes (electrical and plumbing are sold by inches/diameter and foot/lengths) even the Home depot in Edmonton sells construction materials in english measure.
My neighbor has 8 kids other neighbour has 10 kids both are from Mexico. Parents
Serious question: how can mass immigration negatively affect a native population?
If you Canadians had polled the First Peoples on whether or not to allow mass immigration, how might they have voted? Would this have been racist on the part of the First Peoples, seeing that they were denying themselves the benefits of diversity? Why or why not?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"the only thing I find at fault there is that he actually collected some bitcoins at some point"
I find no fault there. I've made quite a few purchases with Bitcoin and made a tidy profit mining at one point.
Milk has been sold in litres here for more than 35 years. Likewise bananas in kg, not pounds. I call you out on your lies!
Dunno about in Alberta, but in Ontario and other parts, I've seen the the prices of bananas posted in pounds more frequently than kilograms. A lot of things are posted in both prices.
The poster already replied but I took his milk number as an approximate conversion for the benefit of American readership, sorta like how a lot of gas price comparisons will convert gas prices between English and metric.
To be honest, I assumed your post was a troll, but people who aren't familiar with Canada might take your post at face value.
You can always sell a house, just sometimes not at the price you want.
I don't know about the conspiracy. It is odd that so many are openly hostile toward Bitcoin. I can see why people find it compelling and would want others to adopt it but I'm sure I see why anyone would have an interest in actively discouraging it other than entrenched financial abusers. None of those are conspiracies. Government currency manipulation, bank nickel and diming, and VISA conflicting business interests aren't secret or open for debate they are public and obvious facts that aren't denied by the relevant parties.
I don't see any particular reason any of the aforementioned parties wouldn't engage in astroturfing. The government has actually published strategies for misinformation campaigns of this sort. Private commercial interests make no secret of doing these things either. What do you think a viral marketing campaign is? Actually you are a bit of a nutjob if your faith in the powers at be is so strong that you think they don't have these conflicting interests or engage in these sort of misinformation campaigns since they openly admit to doing all of the above.
Maybe you shouldn't expect tropical fruit to be dirt cheap in Canada?
tax refuser/corporation sole/"free person"/gold standard etc nutjobs
Just to be sure, not all tax refusers and gold-standard advocates are nutjobs (what's "corporation sole" or "free person" in this context? Those are new terms for me.).
A tax protester who is willing to go to prison for tax evasion in the same way that George Washington et al were willing to be executed for treason is not a nutjob, he's just a person who has extreme (in the USA at least) minority political views and who is willing to stand by them. Now, a tax protester who expects to win in court, well, yeah, that's nut-job territory.
Many respected economists in the post-gold-standard era in the USA were clearly not nut-jobs. However, those that believed they could convince America to return to the Gold Standard merely by stating their case, ignoring the downsides and the difficulty of convincing an entire country that their idea was better than the status quo, were verging on or past the border of nut-job status.
Remember folks, having minority or fringe views is not the hallmark of a nut-job. Having such a distorted view of reality that you don't see the world as it is. When determining if someone is a nut-job in the political sense, a test is whether they are seeing an illusionary world that will listen to them and change once they "hear the gospel truth" when that is clearly not the case.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Remember folks, having minority or fringe views is not the hallmark of a nut-job. Having such a distorted view of reality that you don't see the world as it is is. When determining if someone is a nut-job in the political sense, a test is whether they are seeing an illusionary world that will listen to them and change once they "hear the gospel truth" when that is clearly not the case.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Don't forget Mastercard!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
In other words: god damn immigrants! Go back where you came from!
It is *NOT* immigrants driving prices down. It is migrant workers. Companies are allowed to hire slave labour from overseas, pay them minimum wage then cut expenses like housing and food from that pay - make money on cheap wages *and* on their basic expenses.
Ban migrant workers. No SIN (social insurance number), no work.
Immigrants pay taxes and work for same houses that everyone else. It is migrant workers that undercut everyone and don't even spend their money in Canada. If you want to fix this slave labour problem, ban migrant workers. Only allow immigrants (residents) and citizens to actually work. And if there isn't enough labour, allow more immigrants *not* migrants!
At least he does not accept the full price in Bitcoin. There seems to be some hope for him left.
Well there's some hope left for the sale of the house. I highly doubt you can buy and sell land and using some random exchange technology not being legal tender. How would the govt. calculate the stamp duty for a start?
Killing people is illegal. Bet noone ever gets killed. I was over at my Vietnamese neibours in Oshawa Ont. there were 4 families living in a 1200 sq/ft house in the suburbs. They had the house divided with blankets hanging from the ceiling.
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=Canada&country2=United+States
The nearest oil well is 1 mile away. The nearest gas well is 1/2 miles away. The closest chicken farm is 2 miles away. The closest beef farm is 1 1/2 miles away. And almost all land is gain farms. So why does that stuff cost more?
Yeah the americans just killed all the natives so they couldn't bitch later.
Bitcoins don't count as income and therefore don't get taxed I'd assume.
We are told bitcoin is historically high. Is it the right time to sell in bitcoins? Odds are high it will go down.
No, but anyone who posts on a Bitcoin story explaining how dumb he thinks it is probably has some kind of reason for it. And an organized FUD campaign is certainly a plausible explanation for the amount and vehemency of such posts... The difference is that the people who advocate Bitcoin have a plausible non-sinister reason for doing so: they want to use it. It is harder to see what the motivation of someone who calls for mental evaluation of someone for using it might be, besides spreading FUD.
Seriously? This is the INTERNET. Anybody can voice their opinion about anything, anywhere, anytime. As far as the motivations of detractors... if you seriously can't tell why some people might be a bit wary of a non-government backed, largely unregulated currency that's recognized in only limited locations, you need to step back from the Kool-Aid bowl for a minute.
No doubt. Good answer to all those who bitch about immigration now, because they probably aren't ready to move back to their country of origin.
Big difference is that now, the North American immigrants of today aren't committing genocide in their new homes. The comparison doesn't really hold up for that reason.
You speak the truth! Alberta goes from boom to bust.
No you can't. If there are any taxes that come with the property you might have to pay someone to take it. That's what taxes on owning stuff does.
His dad was an NHL player and the house came from his mothers family.
That's close enough to "inheriting" for the point I was making.
Not necessarily.
Yes, thank you for pointing out that there are a multitude of other extremely unlikely events that could have led to this 22 year old owning a house with no mortgage. I didn't think I needed to explicitly state each and every one of them for the point I was making.
In a random sampling of 22 year olds, how many do you actually think would be in a position to own a house without a mortgage?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
I understand perfectly well why people might be wary. Being wary is different from trying to convince everyone else to not use the thing. That latter part is suspicious.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Where should I move my ancestors came from Europe in the late 1800's. Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Mongolia. Now my children have English, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Mongolia, Germain, and a bit of Cree (native). I wonder what mine or my childrens country of origin is and what country of origin me and my children should move back to?
I apologize for my other post, the "That's close enough to "inheriting" for the point I was making." one. I mis-followed who you were replying to.
Well hopefully you're not telling present immigrants to go back to where they came from, then you don't have a problem. :)
Being a mutt (I am too) and coming here a couple hundred years ago doesn't give you entitlement over first nations and it doesn't give you entitlement to tell other immigrants like you that they should "go back to where they came from" or the right to complain about immigration.
Not in Alberta. Crowsnest Pass is home to several large coal mines, where starting wages for entry level grunt jobs are $32/h. With some expereience in a specific field, he could easily be pulling in six figures. I used to live in Crowsnest Pass.
No, it isn't. You just want it to be.
I totally got some magic beans for my house!
So the choice is ...
(a) 1. Both parties research a volatile currency and agree on an acceptable exchange rate. 2. You purchase bitcoins for dollars. 3. You transfer bitcoins. 4. The other person sells bitcoins for dollars.
Or:
(b) 1. You transfer dollars.
Yeah, I'm really seeing the simplicity of bitcoins here. Not.
Those people definitely seem to be out of touch with reality there, at least politically speaking.
Kind of reminds me of people who try to claim allodial title to their land without the recognition by the international community as a sovereign state to back it up.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
No arguement there. Except the natives in my area are from Ontario they displaced and killed the original natives in the 1700's when they migrated looking for furs a hundred before my ancestors arrived. My ancestors were farmers they bought land from the gov, cleared the trees and planted crops.
What I do have a problem with is immigrants (residents not citizens) coming here and undercutting on jobs I bid on just to get the job. The immigrants in my area average 6 kids plus (one familly in my community has 14 kids) at $300 a month in child tax benefits that is a lot of money. Also their children are allowed to drop out of school at 14 opposed to 16 for everyone else (they have their own gov funded school and gov teachers who are suppervised at all times one-on-one by members of their community). They also pull their kids out of school to work we are talking 10 -12 year olds working in construction. Alberta does not allow anyone under the age of 16 to work in construction or during school hours. I can't compete against free child labour when I have to hire at a starting wage of $20 for labour and $25 - $30 for tradesmen.
It may not be common for a 22 year old to pay off his own mortgage or just buy a house with cash (and evidently not in this case) but it's not unheard of. He could have been a teen Olympian with a big post-Games endorsement deal, a pop singer, or that British kid who just sold his app to Yahoo for $30 million.
Global viewr.com now accepts Bitcoins for Property Around the World: http://www.viewr.com/finance/bitcoin