An island in Micronesia. gold mine in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Tickets to the 2014 Victoria’s Secret fashion show in London. Those are just a few of the assets on offer at BitPremier, a website targeting bitcoin holders looking to unload some of their digital hoard.
The number of listings on BitPremier took off when the price of a single bitcoin skyrocketed to $1,137 at end-November 2013 from $12 at the start of the year.
After regulatory crackdowns around the world, the value of bitcoins dropped by more than half. However, even with the price fall, there are those sitting on bundles of bitcoins with very few ways to spend them.
Bringing the two groups together is BitPremier, Bloomberg Pursuits will report in its Autumn 2014 issue. The site is the brainchild of 41-year-old Alan Silbert, whose day job is vice president of biotechnology lending at General Electric Capital Corp. (GE) in Washington. Silbert started buying bitcoins in February 2013, when the price was about $22, at the urging of his younger brother Barry , chairman of SecondMarket Inc., a New York-based brokerage specializing in hard-to-trade assets.
The brothers realized there was nothing in the bitcoin universe dealing in luxury goods and services and so established BitPremier in May 2013.
“At that point, you could only use bitcoins to buy T-shirts, coffee mugs and alpaca socks,” Alan says. “We saw a big void in the market that we wanted to fill. If you want to diversify into bitcoins, we’re the place to do it.”
Indeed, BitPremier helped broker one of the biggest transactions ever conducted in bitcoins: the February sale of a two-bedroom villa with a pool in Seminyak, Bali, for $650,000, or about 950 bitcoins. Those who think bitcoins are fool’s gold should know that they can be used to buy the real thing. Tim Coles, a 54-yearold Canadian, is currently shopping his Dawson City , Yukon, gold mine on BitPremier for $2 million, or 4,217 bitcoins, in a bid to cash out after 35 years in the business.
